


To children ardent for some desperate glory

by greenmagnolia



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Antisemitism, Arranged Marriage, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Betrayal, Canon Compliant, Character Death, Cheating, F/M, Fascism, In a way, Infidelity, Miscarriage, Or at least I will try, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Parent Alfie Solomons, Past Rape/Non-con, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Possibly Unrequited Love, Post-Season/Series 05 Finale, Pregnancy, Sex Work, Suicide Attempt, Vaginal Sex, antiziganism, don't worry he's got a plan, everyone has a lot of trauma, mentioned - Freeform, there will be smut, trying to remember all the relevant things to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:55:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 73,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24592657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenmagnolia/pseuds/greenmagnolia
Summary: [Set after Season 5]Lizzie finds Tommy in the barley field, Alfie Solomons finds someone who can maybe help Tommy shed some light on who betrayed him.A marriage is arranged; the young continue to act as cannon fodder.Lizzie picks up the breadcrumbs Tommy drops her, stores them in the safe in her heart. The safe she then weighs against the other one in her head: each time she finds it is heavier than she thought.
Relationships: Tommy Shelby/Lizzie Stark
Comments: 110
Kudos: 156





	1. Into the mist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Maybe it would once again stop his heart from breaking, and she’d get a nice coat for Christmas in return._   
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for: suicide attempts, mention of past rape

If you'd asked Lizzie Shelby what drove her out into a field late at night after her husband failed to come back, she would have replied that it had been a feeling.

Not that she believed in any of that. Her husband’s aunt often spoke about ghosts, and spirits, and claimed that she could feel things - like whether you were going to have a boy or a girl, when you fell pregnant, and she never got that one wrong. Lizzie didn’t believe it, and figured it had to be sheer luck. Polly didn’t speak much to them these days, or at all, because her fiancé had been killed the very night Lizzie found her husband with a gun to his own head, but Lizzie didn’t know this yet and all she could think about were ghosts.

It wasn’t unusual for Tommy to fail to come back. Lizzie never waited for him, and he didn’t awake her when he returned, if she was already asleep. However, Lizzie retired late most days, so she often saw him return; those were the times they fucked, mostly, when he was tired and needed relief. As for her, she had no preference about where and when they fucked, possibly a residue from her previous way of life: being able to choose who seemed enough. There was a considerable amount of fucking involved, especially for a marriage of convenience; that was part of why she never minded too much.

Truth was, Lizzie Shelby had always had especially low expectations in life, but she had received more than an optimistic woman would have dared to expect; she mostly felt undeserving of it all, and compensated by acting as if everything she had was by birthright.

That evening she’d listened to Mosley’s speech at the rally on their radio; his voice creaked and the applause sometimes covered it, which wasn’t a big loss in her eyes. Her husband hadn’t talked, hadn’t said anything, had barely been introduced. It still pained her to hear his name - which had become hers as well now - in that kind of context, so deeply connected to those speeches that nothing but scared her.

She’d swallowed that too and thought, it’s for the greater good; as Tommy’s apparently senseless actions always were. It all came to some end, at some point.

But then nothing had happened. And it had scared her.

Now the phone was ringing. She took the call, out of habit from her second job, or out of this feeling that whatever it was, it was far too important for the staff’s ears. She stated her name as one would state a rank.

«Finally meeting Lady Shelby, I see,» a voice with a thick Cockney accent replied from the other side. He called her Lady. «S’pose your husband’s not there to answer, am I right?»

«He still hasn’t come back. He’s a very busy man, as I’m sure you know, Mr…?»

«Remind him,» the man replied, «remind him of the seven lean cows.»

«I’ll write it down,» she replied. «Mr…?»

«Not a good Christian girl, I gather, eh?»

Lizzie would have been more patient, under more normal circumstances.

«I’ll tell him about the cows, Mr Solomons,» she tried. The man on the other side laughed.

«No secrets, eh, Tommy? Good lad. Keep an eye on him.» And just like that he was gone.

Afterwards Lizzie thought it had been another warning from the Jewish man she’d so often heard about. She could picture him listening to the radio, even though she had little idea of what he looked like. Like a Londoner, she guessed, like a Jewish Londoner.

Keep an eye on him, he’d said.

Tommy had been hearing voices sometimes. In his sleep, and while awake. She mostly noticed when he was asleep, whenever they managed to share a bed while she was awake; they talked to him, and he talked back to them. In English, most of the time, but in Romani as well. She’d picked up some Romani during their peregrinations, shortly after Ruby’s birth and later; mostly words from everyday life in the forests, along the rivers, in the wagons. But most of the time he spoke English, and she understood that well enough.

(She wasn’t stupid; she knew who they were. Who it was.)

Then the car pulled over, and she heard muffled voices - Arthur’s, she recognized. The car left, and with it, presumably, Tommy’s brother. But still he didn’t walk in.

The thing was, ever since she’d met him - Tommy had done a lot of truly inexplicable things, and through equally inexplicable means they had all ended well.

Sometimes less well than others, sometimes messily, like that afternoon at the races; sometimes at such a high price, Lizzie had secretly wondered whether they were worth it at all - like on Boxing Day, his brother’s body cold, in the morgue, and Esme’s screams, and seven children left fatherless.

But it had always worked out more or less fine.

Like Polly’s prophecies, the way her hands, curled on her breasts, had been able to determine that she was expecting a Ruby and not a Thomas Jr; a spectacular performance of mystical arts, with maybe acceptable chances of success. Once. Twice.

They were now past the amount of times this could work. And back then, he hadn’t been hearing voices.

(He hadn’t been hearing her.)

So maybe this set it apart. From all the other times, that was. But then again, every time she’d thought that Tommy had reached a new low, he’d managed to surprise her, as he often did; he’d managed to dig even deeper, and after the war, God knew he was good at that.

So no, maybe it was nothing, or maybe it was something; and even if it was something, nothing assured her that she would find the answer wandering in the stables, with the horses he liked so much, or in the barley field behind Arrow House, the one he’d blown up not too long ago during Charlie’s violin lesson. But that’s what she chose to do.

She put on a coat, because it was almost December and the air was chilly, slipped into her most comfortable heels, and she set out in the premises, avoiding Mary’s patrol around the too big house. She walked to the stables quickly, to keep out the cold that had started to bother her since she’d embarked on the fancy life of an MP’s wife. She wasn’t expecting to find anything this close to the main house.

The stables were quiet and the horses asleep. Never liked horses much, Lizzie. She wasn’t expecting anything there, either. Maybe Tommy had taken the backdoor intentionally, with the purpose of avoiding her. How unkind of her to go out and look for him when he himself didn’t want to be found.

Then she walked even further, to the barley field. The violin teacher had asked. Fireworks, she’d replied, my husband is trying out fireworks. Just like that, lying had become second nature a long time ago. She hadn’t even been mad. Explosions not even two hundred yards away from his own children - she had tried to be mad but hadn’t succeeded. Afterwards she’d asked him whether he’d been thorough, whether it was safe to go out to play for the kids. And he hadn’t been himself, in the slightest, when he’d said yes - she almost hadn’t trusted him.

(Since when?)

The mist covered the dark earth, and a couple of times she nearly stumbled. She quickly got back on her feet both times. It was too dark to see what was ahead, and if he was there or not. She was headed to the scarecrow, the lighthouse of the barley field, the only thing one could realistically walk towards in the bloody field. A city girl, Lizzie had always been a city girl, Birmingham born and bread, the farthest she’d ever been had been the seaside, in the South, but the terrain there hadn't felt like quicksand under her feet. The uncertainty of her steps annoyed her, wondering whether a hole in the ground, unseen, was going to twist her ankle and leave her lying there until the morning (and was there even going to be a morning?); wondering whether the land was going to explode underneath her feet, her shoes now beyond dirty.

Soon she could make out the scarecrow in the mist; a few more uncertain steps on the uneven ground and then she could hear him over the sound of the wind. He was screaming.

She was close enough to make out his silhouette now, and to tell he was completely alone. She hadn’t doubted it. His mouth agape, like in one of those modern paintings, his arms wide and something in his right one.

After she’d died, she’d seen him come apart - vulnerable and distant, pretending she was Grace, she’d thought at first, but then she’d understood - pretending Lizzie was nobody at all, a cunt attached to nothing in particular as he fucked her against his desk. And she’d let him. Even then, Lizzie thought, there had been that awareness down below, that this wasn’t fair to either of them, the look of gratitude in his eyes afterwards.

Now there was nothing; he wasn’t more humanlike than the scarecrow that loomed behind him. He screamed and flailed his arms around like laundry left out to dry, making sounds she couldn’t quite recognize. He was speaking to someone again, in English, apparently, and this someone was somewhere on Lizzie’s left. She didn’t need to look to know that nobody was there. She knew he was talking to someone because after a few beats, the bellowing stopped, as if the other person was replying; then it started again.

Lizzie had dealt with armed johns one or two times; she’d done it poorly and, she knew, survived by sheer luck. She’d lied down, closed her eyes and decided that tonight, her mind was going on vacation. It was something she often did, when she found it all too much to take.

It went to the seaside, where her mother’s sister had lived, and they’d visited her aunt a few summers, the last time being when her sister had been too sick for the city.

While her mind took a bath and built a sandcastle with her older sister who’d died of consumption before the war, the men took whatever it was that they wanted, and sometimes her money as well; but once sated, they put the gun back in their pockets and that was it. And that much, Lizzie could handle, because they wanted something from her that she was somehow able to give.

The thing with Tommy had been that she’d tried, and tried, and tried, to give him whatever it was that he wanted; sometimes she’d been some degree of successful.

_(Because some nights it was you who stopped my heart from breaking. No one else.)_

But in the barley field she knew there was nothing that she, or anyone else, for that matter, could do about it.

She could walk closer to him, for a start. Close enough to see the shiny metal of the gun. She knew it was loaded, and that it was going to fire. All his life, Thomas had only misfired once. (It still stung.)

The waves of the sea made their old rhythmic sound. The sound hadn’t changed since before the war. Her sister’s shiny hair was one with the wind; her laughter soft and eyes sweet. Thomas hadn’t noticed her, or if he had, he didn’t show it; he screamed. He raised the gun. It was against his temple now. It was like Tommy, to never do things in half. A man like him wasn’t going to die in a car accident, or from all the booze and smoke - though God only knew how hard he tried. Like Tommy to blow his brains out in the barley field, and like Lizzie to pick up all the pieces, again.

Except there was going to be no next time.

Another step and he turned his head. Immediately he seemed mortified; something glistened, something seemed to return to his light eyes, an awareness, perhaps, a cloud. Lizzie swore she could hear her sister’s voice on the beach. Here they were, listening to dead people’s voices.

Lizzie could not afford to hear Jo’s voice in the barley field. So she chased her sister away from her mind; towards better places. Jo always escaped as soon as Lizzie returned to the beds she shared with jonhs, or the alleys sometimes as well; when Lizzie stopped being child-Lizzie and became the Lizzie she’d become after the war. She faded from the beach and from her memory and Lizzie wasn’t child-Lizzie anymore - it was the life of a girl who happened to look a lot like her; someone else’s beach and someone else’s memories.

She stepped forward once again and held out a hand for Tommy to give her the gun. He'd never liked to be ordered around. It was a testament to his presence of mind, she thought, when he meekly held out his hand with the gun in it, and slowly lifted it closer, and closer - and then as an afterthought it went back to his head again, no, not to his head, to the sky where it shot only once. Had there been crows, they would have fled the scene on steady wings, but it was empty, the field, and the only creatures who replied where the horses far away in the stables with their shrieks.

He’d shot at the sky, she figured, when he was still standing in front of her, he’d shot at the sky to scare her away as if she were a horse, or a wild animal. Lizzie nearly chuckled at the thought - perhaps the most unkind thought she’d ever allowed herself to have about her predecessor. Like a schoolteacher she lifted her hand again, requesting. Finally he put the gun on her palm, handling it carelessly, as one would with a shovel.

She put it in the pocket of her coat, and held out her hand for him again. He took her arm. Her steps were no longer uncertain on the uneven terrain, not now that she had him on his arm. The great Thomas Shelby, being walked home with the same amount of care she reserved for when she’d roamed the forests with Ruby, away from the wagons. He was an inch or so shorter, but stockier, heavier, and yet he never restrained from resting all of that weight on her frame, while they were lying down in bed, as if he knew she could take it, or perhaps just as much weight as he knew she could take. So far she had.

He wasn’t limping; for some reason she’d expected him to. He seemed physically unharmed, which was logical, rationally thinking, since he hadn’t shot at himself, but it felt like a small miracle. Skinny, he still was, having never gained back all the weight he’d lost on his strange vacation, after the killing of Luca Changretta - when he’d become skinnier and gaunt as her stomach had grown and he’d never once come to see her. His muscles were as tense as the chords on Charlie’s violin, the way they always were.

Nothing that was going to kill him in the short term, at least, and as usual, like the pieces of glass on the beach, the ones she'd liked to collect with Jo: it took a long time to wear them down to the point where you couldn’t quite recognize what they used to be, apart from the color. The same process was happening on a more fundamental level to the man she had married, she figured. It had started a long time ago.

They walked past the stables, where the horses were silent again, and Tommy was carrying more and more of his own weight now. She stopped supporting him to leave him at the door, as she walked on ahead, looking for Mary. The house was silent; the maid must have ceased her patrol walks. So she came back to lead him inside, helped him get rid of his heavy coat as she got rid of hers and of the muddy heels.

She did not look up as they went upstairs, on the grand staircase turned shrine; he was staring at the picture on the wall, of the woman he’d just scared off like a boar.

She lead him to the closest bathroom, ran him a bath. Watched as he undressed completely. There was nothing sexual about the way he did it, shoulders slouched forwards and jaw tight, focused on the tub. He sat down in it with his knees close to his chest. When it became clear he was not going to move, she started to massage his scalp, the shaven sides of his head tickling her fingers, which was a feeling she enjoyed - she often caressed his head as they fucked. It seemed incredible that she had ever fucked him, as she massaged his scalp to wash his hair, already damp from the mist.

Although it didn’t feel strange, it was unlike anything else she’d ever seen coming from him; she’d seen him in quite a few compromising conditions, due to the nature of her job. She’d seen the prototype of the man, just after the war, a kinder john than most, but Thomas Shelby was a man too - she’d seen him let down his guard just for a minute when he was spent. That had happened quite a few times afterwards, on his desk at the betting shop, in his various offices and in various positions, most often with her sitting or bent on the tables; Polly had been wrong when she’d said that Lizzie had never spent a day’s work vertical. Maybe he trusted her enough to show his soft underbelly, or maybe it was a calculated risk due to his inability to go without sex. Lizzie didn’t know.

When she was done with the hair she began to scrub his back clean; he never once complained. Suddenly she was reminded of the phone call from the Jewish man. Solomons called, she was about to say, but it didn’t feel important enough to break the silence.

He washed the rest of himself alone, Lizzie leaning against the sink and observing him, in one of the most rarely used and therefore neutral bathrooms, in a house where few things were truly neutral now. Guarding him like the first times Ruby had tried to gain her independence; as if she couldn’t quite trust him not to hurt himself. And she couldn’t - not after that night.

Still naked, wrapped in a towel only, he made his way to the bedroom. Lizzie waited until he was settled in the king sized bed, then turned on her heels and as she was about to go she heard his voice. It was the first time he spoke.

«Stay,» he told her.

And stay she did, stepping out of her dress and into his sheets.

He fell asleep first, as he’d done the first times he’d let himself spend the night. It was an exceptional thing for him, a notorious fussy sleeper, who often had to rely on chemicals in the evenings. Nights at Lizzie’s were his vacation, maybe. But for her it was the norm. She was the only person who could observe Thomas Shelby for so long while he slept, these days.

She hadn’t done that in a while. Now she let herself watch, lying on her side, as he snored slightly on his stomach like a newborn.

Thinking coldly, now - there were so many things she should’ve asked. She might have carried him away from the barley field, but she'd failed him as a secretary.

She did not know about the rally, or about the night that had just passed; she did not doubt she would find out, eventually. There were so many things to talk about, and because of them Tommy was the way he was, and since he was like that they could not talk about them. With the still unclear events of the evening that had just ended and Michael hellbent on running the company, an internal threat they’d seen coming but had never had to deal with before. With Arthur too unstable to even be aware of the finer mechanisms; with John six feet under the ground.

(With Polly conversing with ghosts.)

A few times already she’d felt like the survival of Shelby Company Limited had been in her hands. This was one of those times.

Her body was tired, but her mind still sharp, from the scare back in the field, that she hadn’t had the time to process quite yet. So, once she was sure he was really sleeping, she got on her feet silently, not even bothering to cover her undergarments.

She walked to his study through the corridors; the children were silent. Asleep. With some luck, they hadn’t heard a thing. Lizzie’s childhood had definitely been very different from theirs, but they reminded her of herself when she had been young, of those days on the beach with her sister Jo. The reason why they were on that beach was Jo’s increasingly frail health, a last attempt by their mother to save her eldest daughter; but Lizzie hadn’t known that. So they’d played together in the sand, and it was to this day one of Lizzie’s fondest memories. Jo had to have known, she was now sure.

The study was on the upper floor, much to Lizzie’s relief, because she didn’t have to see that staircase again. She tiptoed to the desk where the phone had rung earlier and the Jew’s raspy voice had told her the thing about the lean cows. It had awakened some distant memory in Lizzie - something from school, perhaps. She picked it up and dialed. It was late, almost two in the morning, but she felt this was important enough.

She imagined Polly’s phone ringing in her drawing room, the woman awakening with a curse and stumbling, still in her nightclothes, to the table where she kept the machine. She must have been deeply asleep, because Lizzie waited and waited but Polly never picked up.

She couldn’t know it yet, that she wasn’t going to hear from her in quite some time.

Eventually, she put down the phone. She was puzzled, if anything. She figured since she was already out of their shared bed, she might as well pour herself some whisky. More than two fingers.

She drank it by the fireplace, where the fire had burnt until Frances had put it out, tucking her legs underneath her and not even pretending to taste it. For the eradication of seemingly incurable sadness, it was labeled, but she wasn’t sad. She wasn’t feeling anything in particular.

Once finished, she was tempted to stay there a while. To sleep on the ottoman, maybe, curled in a tight ball, but then she remembered what he’d said.

Stay.

And she hadn’t even believed it, accustomed as she was to his lies. But why would a dying man lie, she thought. Maybe he thought her presence would help. Maybe it would once again stop his heart from breaking, and she’d get a nice coat for Christmas in return.

«You left, last night.»

«I came back.»

«Yes,» he replied, «thank you.»

That was enough to upset her, as she drank her tea. So far, he’d pretended it was business as usual; like one of those days when they slept in the same bed. A breakfast together type of day, even; a rare occurrence nowadays.

«I tried to call Polly,» she offered. «She didn’t pick up. Must have been asleep.»

She wondered whether it had been the right thing to say. Whether he would have been mad that she'd chosen to disclose his vulnerable state, if only to his own aunt.

«She’s not gonna pick up for a very long time, Lizzie,» he told her. «Like that time with the noose.»

She should have been stark, then. Like that one time she’d told him about the solicitor - stood to her whole height and told him, I need you to tell me what is going on.

«I have failed her again, Lizzie, one more time.» He hadn’t touched his tea and she hadn’t expected him to. «Wouldn’t have happened, if someone had fucking listened to me.»

He sounded angry, although not specifically at her. She could be subtle about it, she guessed. Tackled it sideways. «Who didn’t listen to you?»

«Listened too closely,» he replied, laughing as if it were funny, as if she were his schoolteacher who’d just caught him red-handed. «They all want the throne, Lizzie.»

«Is it about the company?»

He stared ahead for a few seconds, then pulled out his case and began smoking the first cigarette of the day. If he was smoking, then he was not dying, so, in a way, that was better than nothing.

«No,» he replied.

She nodded.

«The Jew called, as well,» she suddenly remembered - it felt like a lifetime ago. «Before you and Arthur arrived.»

«What did he say?»

«To remind you of the seven lean cows.»

He nodded. She wondered what Solomons had to do with it all, if anything. He’d been the cause of Charlie’s kidnapping, he’d double-crossed Thomas more than once, and still he had his phone number and was bold enough to call his home.

(But then again:  
Thomas had been the cause of the life she’d never had with John, and with Angel, as well; of that army man’s cock pushing between her thighs; and still here she was. And she knew what they said about stones and glass houses, and she figured they were both lost causes after all.)

«You have got to trust me on this one, Liz,» he told her, once again with that tone, as if they were sharing a secret, which sometimes they were, but not now.

«Of course,» Lizzie replied. «When haven’t I.»

Then he disappeared in his room and came back with a duffel bag. Full, from the thud it made when it hit the floor.

«We’re going away, Lizzie.»

«To the seaside?» she replied. The last vacation he’d taken hadn’t done him good.

«With the Lees,» he replied, «you enjoy that, don’t you, Lizzie.»

She shrugged. She guessed she did. Helping out at the camp made her feel useful.

«Johnny Dogs is taking us to the river,» he shouted, headed to the stables.

«The children?»

«The children as well,» he replied, stopping at the door, his hat in his hands and the cigarette between his lips, «not leaving any child of mine out of my sight, eh?»

Are we being threatened, she wanted to ask, Charlie’s kidnapping still fresh in her mind.

«Please tell me you have a plan,» she told the empty doorway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My first Peaky Blinders fic! Will feature a lot of Lizzie.  
> Will try to update regularly - I already have about 15k written.  
> Comments always welcome!


	2. Rivers and roads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _And sometimes she caught a glimpse of the man she so desperately wished him to be, and that was enough for a few days at least. To keep her going._  
>  […] _«Truth is, Lizzie,» he replied, tightening his arm around her as he turned to his side, «I don’t think I could’ve survived being betrayed by you.»_

For a while it was just wagons, and the sound of wheels on wet terrain as they travelled. Clouds of mist leaving the ground like small animals, traveling fast but never as fast as them. Then they settled down near the border with Wales; the camp was set in a clearing, not too far from a small river, with the vardos arranged in a circle and in the middle of it, the fires.

The first night Lizzie helped the men gather wood for the fires. An old woman cooked. Two horses were tied near the trees, munching on the grass or whatever kind of greenery it was that horses ate. Charlie was petting the face of the fairer one. «Don’t bother him too much,» she shouted at him, as she watched Ruby play with some pots. They’d only brought a few toys; traveling light was a necessity, due to the small amounts of space available, and Ruby only played with a few selected toys anyway, no matter how many she received as gifts.

They’d left two mornings later, just enough time for her to arrange the trip with Johnny Dogs and the maids, with Charlie and Ruby in tow; Johnny Dogs had taken them to the river, at the edge of the forest, where they’d joined the Lees who’d taken a detour for them. It wasn’t the first time Lizzie joined them, and in fact it hadn’t been long since the last time, in October, where news of the stock market crash had reached them. Tommy had shot the horse and Charlie had been upset. It hadn’t been pleasant, overall, but not because of where they were.

Sometimes she wondered whether he would’ve brought Grace along as well. Or if he would have been ashamed, in front of her, whose father had worn a uniform. Besides, it forced you to see the least glamorous parts of a person, she guessed the first night, as one of the men followed her from a distance as she went to relieve herself in the woods; and she couldn’t see Grace relieving herself in the woods. Afterwards they ate on foldable chairs by the fire, since the December evening was already dark. She fed Ruby on her lap, as Tommy talked Charlie into eating the rabbit, so different from the food their cook made at Arrow House.

She shared a wagon with Thomas. They were married, in the end. The Lees weren't exactly the ones they had to keep up appearances with; but the space was what it was, and they’d shared a bed too many times to pretend that they cared. Hell, they were married.

She wondered whether sharing a marital bed was supposed to feel like this; or if it felt more like bed sharing in the trenches, during the War, not necessarily unpleasant, just necessary. With perhaps more fucking. She was a woman, and not a fellow soldier, but they knew each other too well to be shy around one another; and neither of them had ever been the shy type.

While, she suspected, most women met their husband in social occasions first, and only later took them to their beds, she and Tommy had done everything upside down; already too familiar with each other’s bodies when they’d grown closer in spirits as well. So he’d never tiptoed around her, like first time lovers do; he’d never had to pretend to be someone else.

Thomas had spent the first day pacing around the campsite, among the trees, without his hat and unarmed - he would’ve gone barefoot if it hadn’t been so damn cold, Lizzie thought. She’d played with the children, showed them around, Charlie clinging to her as he settled in the unfamiliar environment. 

Thomas ignored her that first night, undressing quickly and putting on his nightclothes. «You putting the children to bed?» he asked, as she nodded and headed to the wagon next to theirs.

Ruby was asleep already, tired from the journey, or the long day, perhaps. Wasn’t one for ceremonies, Ruby. She tucked her in, moving strands of dark hair from her face.

«I want a story,» Charlie said, with a child’s best attempt at a whisper. She sighed, and sat on the floor next to his cot.

«Mrs Hughes says I need to practice daily, or I’ll never be a good musician,» he told her, looking truly worried.

«It’s only for a few days,» she lied, «I’m sure it will be fine. You’re such a fine player already!»

«I want the one with the horse!» he requested. Lizzie sat down on the floor and told it.

Afterwards she walked back to her wagon and changed into her nightclothes. Tommy was still awake, she noticed, as he scooped towards the wall to make room for her.

He left his arm there - an invitation.

«You promised you’d tell me,» she tried.

«I will.»

«You didn’t tell me what was going on the other night.»

«Truth is, Lizzie,» he replied, tightening his arm around her as he turned to his side, «I don’t think I could’ve survived being betrayed by you.»

She was unsure of how that was supposed to make her feel - offended, perhaps, or delighted, or lied to, his preoccupation a bad excuse for yet another lie by omission.

«So you were betrayed, then?» she chose to reply.

«Almost had it all, Lizzie,» he replied in a whisper. He was nuzzling now, properly nuzzling against her arm, like when he’d hugged her stomach like a small child, him seated in the chair in his bedroom, her standing in front of it.

«’s not like in the war. There’s not just one front, Lizzie, understand? They’re coming from all directions.»

«So you don’t know who did it?»

«I’m going to find out,» he replied.

«Tom.»

«And then we’ll be alright. For good.»

«Tom,» she repeated. «No, we won’t.»

He did not contradict her. «Want to fuck?» he asked instead.

«Not particularly, no,» she replied.

She dozed off before he did. She probably would have fucked, had it been any other time. Preparations for whatever had just happened had kept Tommy away from Arrow House more often than not; it had been a long time. Twenty year old Lizzie would never have believed it - that she would one day miss it.

But the scarecrow screaming in the field, arms carried by the wind in all directions, was still somewhere on the back of her mind, superimposed on her husband every time she looked at him. It was not the same Tommy who had left that morning looking more tense than usual; and not how that Tommy hadn’t been the same Tommy she’d met. It was deeper than that, a disease. And you don’t take advantage of someone who’s not in his right mind.

«Pitying me, Lizzie?» he asked her after a while, as she was almost falling asleep.

She tried to encourage him to engage with the children, to keep their uneasiness over the unfamiliar environment at bay, hoping it would be beneficial to both parties involved.

«Remember,» he was telling Charlie, «we were here in October.»

«When you shot the horse,» the boy’s petulant voice replied.

«Forget about that, eh,» Tommy told him, but he looked down at the ground as he spoke.

In the meantime Lizzie was setting a makeshift table, to feed little Ruby breakfast. Thomas stayed away from the table, and the food. He welcomed his daughter with open arms once she was finished eating. She still seemed to be in the mood for a meal, because she brought him her little pots and teacups and Lizzie knew the game she meant to play.

He was not a good father, and surely not the caring one Lizzie had dared imagine when she was pregnant with her only child, knowing full well it was never meant to be. He did not come home early from work to pick up the little girl and spin her around in the kitchen, as a good father should do in Lizzie’s imagination - she didn’t have a clear reference in mind, since hers had died back in 1902; he didn’t take a little time out of his busy day to play with them come evening. That said, he tried. And sometimes she caught a glimpse of the man she so desperately wished him to be, and that was enough for a few days at least. To keep her going.

This was one of such glimpses - his arms wrapping around the child, lifting her into the air, which was becoming harder and harder as every day went by. Lizzie loved both of her children equally, but Ruby had her very own soft spot, and not only because she’d felt her grow inside of her for nearly nine months. Lizzie didn’t think it made her selfish - only human.

Thomas played along. She’d brought a selection from her set of toys - a little horse figure and two small dolls, as well as the tiny pots. She arranged them in a circle as if seated at a round table, placing a little cup in front of each one of them. She gave herself and Tommy a cup as well. Then began pretending to fill the pots from the teapot, starting from the dolls, then the horse and herself, and only in the end her father. Lizzie had noticed that the order never changed, although a maid usually took Tommy’s place.

«Must drink it,» she told him. He complied, lifting the cup to his lips. It was so small his finger couldn’t quite fit through the handle, and he held it awkwardly in his hand. Then he seemed at a loss for what to do next, as she lifted the tiny horse and began examining it. Apparently satisfied, she picked up the other dolls as well, stacked them aside, then began placing them again on the ground. In the same order, Lizzie noticed, always the same order. Tommy sat beside her and watched, one eyebrow raised.

«Seems to amuse her,» Lizzie explained, feeling like an explanation was needed. «You don’t have to do much.»

Unlike Charlie, Lizzie had always been a fairly independent child, much easier to deal with than she’d feared. Charlie had been fussy, but rewarding - always sweet and almost clingy, he expressed affection naturally. Ruby often tried to wiggle her way out of cuddles or the maids’ hugs. This seemed to unnerve the maids - but only made Lizzie prouder.

(Though sometimes she wished her daughter had been born a little easier to love.)

Thomas sat by her side as she arranged the dolls over and over again, always with the same motions, observing her every move. Eventually she tossed one of the dolls aside, and it landed with a thud somewhere near her father’s right shoe. Lizzie did not miss the way her small fingers curled - as if holding something. Pulling a very small and invisible trigger. Had Tommy seen that too?

After lunch, Lizzie tried reading. Linda liked to read and had given her some advice on authors and other things. Her sister Jo had liked to read, so books always reminded Lizzie of her.

Ruby was asleep in the wagon; her father and brother were petting the horses, feeding them apples and generally observing them. Lizzie supposed they were different from the horses they had in the city, stockier and more fit for carrying the wagons. She wondered whether they had ever thought of adding engines to wagons. They couldn’t all be like Tommy - obsessed with the horses.

«Would you shoot her, dad?» she heard Charlie ask. The fairer horse was a mare then, Lizzie registered.

Tommy didn’t reply.

«I don’t think you would,» the child reply, voice full of disdain - those had to be terrible words in the mind of an eight year old. She was about to stand up to intervene, when Thomas walked away into the woods.

What the fuck are you doing, she wanted to scream, he’s eight, but he had already disappeared through the trees.

He came back late, while they were eating dinner. The Lees didn’t question his absence, serving Lizzie her share as if she was kin. She supposed she was. As a man with a beard handed her the bowl, she wondered whether other wives were supposed to feel like this - like something that’s not quite what everyone else pretends they are.

She was almost finished when he came back, and as soon as she saw him, for reasons unknown even to herself, she shoved the bowl into his hands.

He looked at her with puzzled eyes, then began eating it. Lizzie chuckled - she hadn't meant it as an order.

«Cleared your mind?» she asked.

He nodded. She wasn’t interested in knowing more.

She decided he’d had more than his fair share of his children for the day, and put them both to bed herself. Ruby was easy as always - Charlie requested another tale.

«How long are you planning to stay?» she asked him back in their shared vardo, both lying on their backs on the too narrow bed. Staring at the ceiling, Thomas smoking what she hoped was his last cigarette for the day.

«Already want back, Lizzie?»

«Wish I could stay here forever, reading all day and eating good food,» she replied, although it was only halfway true.

He couldn’t tell her, I never asked you to be in my life - because they both knew it wouldn’t be true; she’d never forced her, but he’d also shut down every single one of her attempts at escaping, so it was just fair that he didn’t reply.

«But the company,» she continued, «Michael, with that wife of his…»

«Not the first wife who tried to use her husband for her advantage, and she won’t be the last,» he said, the accusation unspoken.

She accepted the blow. «Michael would sell Pol for leadership, and I would advise against leaving it vacant now.»

«I’ll take note of your advice,» he replied, his voice flat.

«You’re not worried because you have a plan?»

«I packed more than clothes, Lizzie,» he replied. «He can have a little fun with the strikes if he wants. I trust him not to fuck it all up.»

Again, was in the air, once again unspoken. «You left him a playground, then.»

He nodded. «Maybe he’ll actually learn a thing or two.»

«Still, this cannot last,» she said, determined to end the conversation there, because it _was_ a temporary solution at best, and a risky one, at that. She turned her back to him, making the bed creak and hitting his hips with her back in the process.

But then his hand was on her side, at first tentatively, then more determined, to cup her breast and catch her chin between thumb and index.

«You’re not the only one pitying me, Lizzie,» he whispered.

«The Lees are still…»

«Scared of me, as they should,» he completed. «I don’t mean the Lees, Lizzie. They went from being scared, you said…»

«They’re in an unfamiliar environment, Tom,» she stated, escaping his grip on her face. «They’re not used to seeing you around this often.»

«They aren’t, are they? Ruby…»

«I’m worried about her,» she said abruptly.

«How come?»

«You saw her play earlier. That ain’t normal, Tom. She pretends to shoot the horse as well, when she thinks nobody’s watching. The dolls…»

«When Charlie was her age…»

 _And how would you know_ , she was about to ask, _were you around for him?_

«…I think he was sort of like that, as well. It’s fine, Lizzie. You’re worrying too much.»

He did not want to talk about Ruby; his hand was back on her breast, the other one turning her shoulders to face him. Searching for her mouth with his lips. It infuriated her, she realized. (Though sometimes she wished her child had been born a little easier to love.) Don’t reject Ruby, she thought, don't reject her. You can reject me if you want, but not her. She kicked her feet into the air as she turned around, facing him. «Perhaps,» she whispered, opening her mouth to his. It had been a while.

He tossed her nightgown aside deftly, practiced ease coming from how many years? Now ten, she counted, more than ten, there are no secrets left anymore. His hands on her hips, running up and down, more for his own pleasure than for hers, though he was already hard.

She slid down a hand to grasp him, began stroking him as he sucked on her nipple - the right one. Waited until she was properly wet to come in unceremoniously, a small kindness she’d once valued and could now at least take from granted. He worked his way in until he was fully inside, then grabbed her by her sides, manhandled her until she was on top of him. And if the vardo creaked, the Lees knew they were married; they would understand.

Lizzie knew the motions, which ones he liked and which ones were going to make him come sooner; she decided to make him wait. Rode him slowly, lifting herself with her knees just enough for him to groan lightly underneath, building to a rhythm and then losing it on purpose until he looked like he was frustrated - angry, even, but she knew he was not. Then it grew quicker and her hips were moving higher now, until she could feel his tip every time, and she knew how to move when she decided it was time for him to come. Watched his face as he came undone underneath her, panting hard, eyes glassy and mouth ajar. She leaned forward, running a finger on his tattoo, the scar, then his nipple. He closed her eyes, and she deemed it good enough and let him come.

She lied down on top of him then, her whole weight on him without her knees supporting it on either side of his hips. Gave him time to recover, until his breath wasn’t as shallow anymore. She thought he was spent, but suddenly he moved, until he was on top of her.

«Do you trust me, Lizzie?» he asked her, before lowering his head to focus between her thighs, kissing her and burying his face between her legs.

He’d asked her countless times and the answer had always been yes. A sincere one, even. Once again, she was tempted to say yes, but she knew she could not; she didn’t think he would ever hurt her willingly, not that he wouldn’t hurt her at all.

He didn’t leave her time to reply. He began stroking her clit with two fingers; he had stocky hands, callused, he seldom clipped his nails; it could hurt. Sometimes, especially at first - when it had become mutual, when he'd stopped paying her - he’d made her bleed, cutting the delicate skin of her labia with his nails. When she’d told him, he’d been understanding; his nails were neatly clipped in more normal times. Still, as painful as it had been, that first time he’d pleaser her had been a milestone, like when he’d hired her as his secretary, or when they'd first fucked without compensation, in his office at a time when everyone else was away.

He was scratching her now, slightly, but she didn’t find it in herself to complain - as his fingers moved, from her clit to inside of her where they found a sweet spot and lingered, his other hand splayed on her breast and moving in circles at roughly the same rhythm. He pinched her nipple as he continued, and then his mouth was on hers, and she came - although the first time he’d seen her, he’d thought she was having a stroke, all of her limbs shaking, hand tightening around his head and pulling at the hair on top.

They lay side by side afterwards, not quite hugging but not far from each other either, due to the size of the bed the’d been given, anyway. They could lie down next to each other for ages - each minding their own business, very rarely sharing it. Tommy had tried - he’d actually put some effort - after the promise he’d made; but it was a very small amount of things he shared and Lizzie hadn’t been expecting otherwise.

He looked at her in the eyes this time, blue eyes in blue eyes, perhaps the only way one could have said they physically looked alike. Lizzie tall, and slender, almost awkward, boyish, Tommy smaller than most men who didn’t know him well tended to believe. And then he ever so slowly held out a hand, and touched her cheek - not quite caressing it but almost.

And as Lizzie thought the night was over for real, it began. Someone was knocking hard against the wooden door of their wagon. A few sceneries crossed Lizzie’s mind - nobody checked on the children at night, but what if they had, and what if Ruby had been missing? Wandering alone in the woods, maybe, with wild animals and treacherous tree roots.

«Tommy!» someone screamed from the outside. Whoever it was, he didn’t sound too concerned. «There’s a Jewish gentleman asking for you.»

«It’s night,» Lizzie complained, as Tommy flung himself out of bed and began getting dressed. He was all yellow and white in candlelight, sweaty and with Lizzie’s taste still in his mouth, his hands sticky from her. It made her proud.

She didn’t even bother covering herself with the blanket, as Tommy opened the door and left.

«Would be much easier to find you if you people could stay the fuck in one place,» Alfie Solomons greeted him; rich coming from a man whose people were mostly famous for their diaspora. He was standing around the line where the clearing became forest, and behind him, no doubts, at least a couple of his men. A fire was still burning when two of the Lee men had been drinking, before being scared away by Solomons. It shone on the man’s face, highlighting the ugly scar.

«How did you find me?» Tommy asked. Solomons was looking at him weird; as if he could tell he’d just been fucking, he thought. Wondered whether Solomons fucked.

«Had to ask around. Got men on my payroll.»

He chose not to inquire further.

«Was expecting fireworks the other night, eh,» he told him, the fire’s reflected in his only functioning eye, «you should know, never promise a man things you cannot give him. Or God forbid a woman.»

«It did not go according to plan,» Tommy replied coolly.

«Cool, cool, I just got some free money, then,» Alfie replied. «My boys as well.»

That deal had to have happened, what, mere weeks ago - weeks that felt like months for Tommy. Solomons was looking around with his remaining eye, his hands in his pockets. «Rural,» he stated, trying again. «Wasn’t expecting it from you.»

«’s good to leave Birmingham every now and then.»

«Licking your wounds, Tommy?»

«Bonding with my family,» he replied.

«You better have somebody take care of Cyril.»

Tommy didn’t reply.

«Was told the new Mr Shelby used to be a whore,» Alfie began casually, trying again, but didn’t miss the way Tommy’s jaw tensed. Her taste was still on his lips.

«I don’t mean no offense, mate,» he quickly added, «shan’t the last be first, after all?» And there was genuine concern in his eyes, like when he’d said, stepping out of his character for a second, that he hadn’t known about Charlie. The manic gaze in his eyes and then that clearly drawn line - to fuck with him and sympathize at the same time.

«Leave Lizzie out of this,» Tommy warned with gritted teeth.

«She’s yours, yeah, so I’ve been told. Mosley had known her, eh, biblically, says my source.»

That narrowed it down to approximately all of Small Heath - Lizzie’s past being common knowledge and all. Alfie looked like the kind of man who protects his sources, unless offered a very good deal. And Thomas had no such deal to offer.

«Sure it wasn’t her? Never let women know too much, or so I’ve been told.»

«Been told?» Thomas asked, couldn’t resist asking - voicing a question he’d nursed for a while.

Solomons glanced at him before replying. «Wouldn’t know, mate.»

Tommy nodded. «Wasn’t her,» he confirmed, choosing not to bring up that he could have been offended by the insinuation. «Didn’t know enough. Though she would have wanted to know.»

«Atta boy,» Solomons agreed.

«Kin knew. My brother. It was not him. Another Gypsy who died.»

«Guess we could rule him out, then. Your aunt seemed determined to never speak to you again, by the way.»

«She’ll come around,» Tommy said, or maybe she wouldn’t, and she wouldn’t be wrong - to raise your nephew and then to have your whole life torn to shreds. Once, twice, who was even counting.

«Who else?»

«Trusted men. Family. Churchill.»

«The man himself,» Alfie said, feigning surprise.

«How are you going to go about this, eh? Can’t buy it with your bakery, can’t trade it with…»

«I happen to owe this old friend a favor,» he replied. «Heard he’s having issues with his wealth and family and he would be desperate for a little help. Reckon he dislikes the fascists almost as much as the two of us - maybe that will bring down the price.»

«Money is…»

«Hard after the crash in October - but we both know it was not all you had, so spare us, Tommy, please. Say yes and I’ll send it here among the trees and bird shit. Say no, and this never happened and send my best regards to wife and kids.»

«Why would this man own this information, or the means to acquire it?» Tommy enquired. «Who is he?»

Solomons said a name.

«Guess you’ve gone mute. Guess I can tell him tomorrow at six.»

«We’ll stay here,» Tommy told him.

«You fucking better.»

And then just like that he was gone, limping heavily and leaning on his cane, no doubt towards his men in the trees and to the car parked just outside the forest.


	3. The second coming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Maybe one day they’ll collapse, the stones of old churches, all over England, and something will happen then, she often thought, but so far they hadn't, and that was another fact. It had already been many years back then at Epsom, since Lizzie had started working during the war._   
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw; discussion of past rape, and Lizzie’s attempts at rationalizing Epsom.  
> All of my characters reminisce about their pasts all the time...

After the meeting with the Jew, Tommy seemed to gain some of his shine back. Maybe not enough for the Lees to notice - but Lizzie did. He’d surprised her the previous night, with a care he didn’t often reserve her. Afterwards he’d foregone sleep altogether, leaving the narrow bed all for her, in favor of one of his books in the company of the fire.

He rode in the woods in the morning, straight backed on the fairer horse, the mare. Charlie had wanted to go with his father, but it scared Lizzie to see him ride the big horses, loud and wild and careless unlike the pony Tommy had bought him the previous Christmas. Tommy looked different dressed as a working man; he looked like the factory worker she’d often fantasized about back in ’19, who came home every night to his factory girl, and then they shared a meal and there were genuine expressions on his face, which happened to share Tommy’s features, his razor sharp jaw and cheekbones and crystal clear eyes.

Just like in those fantasies, now, he looked unable to fill the role he’d built for himself as Thomas Shelby, as if it were a Tommy sized hole he’d dug in the oldest wall of Birmingham and framed with gold leaf and marble, for everyone to see, but now he’d become all crooked and couldn’t fit inside the hole anymore.

She tried to remember whether he had looked like this back in October as well, whether it was just an effect of the clean air and the frugal ways of the traveling life, washing the smoke and the evil of the city from their skin like a bath. Or if it was another shadow the night in the field had cast, that had bent Tommy into all those odd angles, until he’d looked more like the scarecrow than like a man.

«Expecting something?» Lizzie asked him when he came back from the woods.

«Someone,» he replied, which was more information than she’d expected.

He must have known he had time, because after lunch he set out again, rode into the woods telling Lizzie he’d be back by four. He left to accompany one of the Lees to the main street, where someone had come to take him God knows where, and to make a phone call at the closest booth, no doubt about the company, the little playground he’d left for his cousin, all the relevant papers neatly stacked in a duffel bag in their vardo.

But he must have been wrong, because it was half past three and Alfie Solomons was standing at the edge of the clearing, asking for Tommy Shelby.

Her first thought as she walked towards him was that he looked funny. Like a working man, shirt tucked only halfway into his pants, braces too loose, beard unkempt, perhaps on purpose, to cover the large scar on his left cheek. Whatever it was that had caused it, it had compromised the eye on that side as well, because it was grey and glassy, clearly unseeing.

He came alone. She thought he must have had men hidden in the trees, near the clearing.

«Mrs Shelby!» he greeted her, as if they’d known each other their whole lives.

«He said he’d be back by four,» she told him, not bothering with introductions since they both clearly knew who the other was.

«See, he’s expecting someone by six. Unfortunately, I came to tell him that the person he’s waiting for has been, ah, delayed.»

«I can tell him that.»

«You were his secretary, right? Guess old habits die hard…» he sounded like he didn’t want to go; talking about the weather like a john who’s just been told no but won't take it.

He’d done his research on her, she realized. Which was not surprising given everything else - he must have done research on all of them. She knew Tommy had business with the man. Had been betrayed, more than once - but still came back to him. She hadn’t been able to keep herself from thinking, about Gypsies and Jews, and Mosley's words. Wondering whether that had anything to do with that.

«Turns out, the difference between wife and secretary isn’t as clear as I’d thought,» she chose to reply, perhaps inspired by how much Tommy had chosen to trust the man.

The man seemed to appreciate that. «That, I can imagine,» he agreed.

If the man wanted small talk, she could give him small talk - the Lees weren’t especially talkative , though they babbled a lot, and she missed speaking to people who lived in cities and said things she could understand. 

«Do you like it here with the wagons?» Solomons asked her.

She took time to consider his question, which was something she'd asked herself often. It was nice as a holiday, she guessed. Every now and then. Other than that, Lizzie, like her mother before her, would have grown roots, had it been biologically possible; she’d grown roots in Small Heath, and once she’d accepted that she was going to die where her roots were, she’d been taken away to Arrow House, and she was trying to grow roots there now. As an old woman, may God let her live that long, she aimed to become a large oak tree, as sturdy and hard as the world itself.

So, «Every now and then,» she replied, «to clear my head.»

He nodded, seemingly satisfied with her answer.

«You’re a married man, Mr Solomons?» she asked him, regretting it almost immediately, hoping it hadn’t come off as a proposition. He didn’t seem to take it as one. She could tell because he showed no reaction, other than apparently genuine amusement.

«Me? You must have heard nothing at all about me, Mrs Shelby,» he replied, the formality of her married name in sharp contrast with his relaxed stance, the way he spoke to her like an old friend.

Maybe he was a notorious womanizer. She tried to imagine him as a john - she would have disliked him as a john - he didn’t seem to be the kind type. It was his clothes, perhaps. She only liked the man in front of her now as her husband’s business partner.

«I did hear a lot about you, Mrs Shelby, though,» he added. Couldn’t miss the way her shoulders tensed.

«Only good things,» she stated.

«Impressive things,» he compromised.

She crossed her arms against her chest, which was covered by a heavy coat - a present from Tommy - and underneath, one of her old dresses, one that she could afford to ruin with the earth and the elements of the camp.

«I don’t mean your occupation - no, no, nothing but respect for that. Truly. Backbone of our society.» She hadn't expected him to mention it so directly.

«Mr Solomons, I don’t see how this is…»

Lizzie was tempted to feel touched by what Mr Solomons had just said about her old profession, a definition she’d never heard before, not in those words; there had been a touch of irony in his voice as he'd said it, but it hadn’t been mean, it hadn’t stung.

(It had stung when Polly had said - she’d said it often before Lizzie had grown on her - that she had never done a day’s work vertical; but the Londoner hadn’t stung.)

«That Mosley man,» he was saying now. Oh, she thought. So this is what it’s about. «What do you think of him?»

She knew the right answer, and she knew she didn’t have to lie. She knew he probably knew, had been told, or could have guessed - that he’d fucked her, once. But she wasn’t going to give him that.

«I trust Tommy,» she said. As she said it, she heard the sound of tiny feet on the ground, realized that Ruby must have awaken from her afternoon nap.

Another difference between her and her half brother was that Charlie would’ve never run as eagerly towards a stranger; but the man didn’t seem to bother little Ruby at all. She just ran there, buried her little face in her mother’s skirts.

«Slept well?» Lizzie asked her. Ruby didn't reply. She didn’t speak much these days. It worried Lizzie to no end - she’d blamed Tommy’s behavior at first; the way he seemed to instill fear into his own children. But Ruby wasn’t scared.

«Lovely one,» Alfie commented, «boy or girl?» though Ruby was way past the age where one couldn't tell.

«Ruby,» Lizzie replied.

«By the way,» Solomons started, without a customary _how cute_ , without petting Ruby’s hair - which she would have despised, anyway - which let Lizzie knew that what he was going to say had nothing to with Ruby, or children.

«Tommy’s still got that kid brother?» Well, it somehow had something to do with kids - Finn would always be a child in her mind, even though he was nearly twenty-two.

«The youngest’s twenty-two,» she saw fit to offer, knowing that he already had that piece of information, anyway.

«What I mean is - he’s unmarried, right?»

«I don’t see how this concerns you, but yes. He is young.» Though John had already been a family man at his age

He nodded, as if he was satisfied with her answer.

And just like that, the sound of hooves on branches and leaves and all kinds of dirt that covered the earth in the woods.

«Guess I’ll leave, then,» Solomons said. «Tell him tomorrow, unless other issues come up.»

He turned around and wobbled away. He had a noticeable limp and looked like walking caused him a great deal of pain. Lizzie found herself hoping that Solomons wasn’t sick, that it was just an injury; although he was the man who had indirectly caused Charlie’s kidnapping a few years before. If you live like this, she thought, you can’t keep a record of such things in your heart, not really. She thought of Tommy then, and then heard hooves on the dry earth. The Jew was just past the edge of the forest when Tommy dismounted with a hurry Lizzie’d rarely seen him in.

«Did he hurt you?» Tommy asked, running towards her and then placing his hands on her arms, checking that she truly was unharmed - then doing the same to little Ruby, before holding her tight to his chest, cupping the back of her head with his hand. She let him do it, though she didn’t reciprocate. Which was good enough.

«He said the person you were supposed to meet - that he’s coming tomorrow. Other than that, he was gibberish,» Lizzie tried to explain.

«He’s like that,» Tommy said, getting back on his feet. He didn’t say, did he try anything, didn’t scrutinize her clothes to tell whether they’d been tampered with.

«Asked about Finn.»

«Why's that?» He was standing in front of them now, back so straight he looked taller than Lizzie.

«Don’t know. He was gibberish. Keep an eye on him,» Lizzie said, because she’d always had a soft spot for the youngest Shelby.

«You can’t keep an eye on Alfie Solomons, Lizzie.»

«On _Finn_ ,» she replied.

Tommy looked at her as if she’d started speaking Chinese. He walked to the vardo, but picked up his daughter first.

Lizzie hadn’t missed it, the way he’d run towards her to check on her, to see if Solomons had hurt her, or maybe to make a show of his worries, to lay his claim once again. It had become worse after Mosley; the man had made Tommy change his mind on Lizzie’s supposed invincibility.

Because he had thought her invincible, once, of that she was sure, or he wouldn’t have asked that of her, at Epsom.

She knew he’s almost pimped out Grace to Billy Kimber once, Polly had told her (she was sure he would never admit that out loud).

It had been in the beginning, after the war, when they were still operating an illegal business; and as crooked as they were, they were a million times more pure than whatever they had become. Lizzie hadn’t been a Shelby back then, just Tommy’s favorite whore, and almost sister in law, though that was another story (it felt so old that Lizzie didn’t even see the point in bringing it up anymore; it had happened to someone else, forever ago).

Grace had been the barmaid with the mysterious past, and the posh accent, that drove Tommy crazy, Lizzie thought - that as proud as he was, it was a self loathing part of his brain that chose his women: Grace first, then that May lady, the widow with the big house. Those who fell for the gangster and stayed because, in spite of everything, Tommy could be really kind. That was the worst part, Lizzie thought.

He’d almost pimped out Grace once, but he hadn’t quite succeeded.

He hadn’t succeeded because he loved her; Lizzie knew it was the most logical answer and the most illogical one at the same time.

Maybe he left, but then he came back before Kimber could violate her, because he loved her. Maybe it had been her accent, her pretty blonde hair and manicured nails, the youthful look on her face from a life not spent fucking strange men for a living in the slums; from the perspective of a future other than fucking more and more strange men on the docks and then dying there. Maybe he hadn’t succeeded because he’d seen her as weak, and fragile, and made of glass, of the fine china rich people kept in cupboards in their homes.

And what was Lizzie, then - not fine china for sure; she was gravel, or stone, made to be walked on, and it takes many years to leave a mark on stone, though they do have marks eventually, like the steps of old churches, but everyone thinks they're indestructible. Maybe one day they’ll collapse, the stones of old churches, all over England, and something will happen then, she often thought, but so far they hadn't, and that was another fact. It had already been many years back then at Epsom, since Lizzie had started working during the war. Fighting her battles alongside the boys.

So maybe Tommy had thought her invincible, he’d given her the task knowing she could do it. He hadn’t seen the signs, hadn’t even looked for them.

That had changed - when she’d become pregnant, perhaps, when he’d first expressed the desire to protect her, and if not her, the child she was carrying; that would have been good enough. It had been Lizzie’s biggest wish come true, but she’d discovered that she wasn’t ready for all that it entailed.

That to let him protect her, she needed to notify him of her own vulnetability, and not hide it behind stony expressions and nicer clothes, now that she could afford them.

Tommy held onto Ruby the whole evening - and if Lizzie found it strange she didn’t mention it. He fed her dinner and kept her on his knee as she complained and wept and refused to be spoon fed the broth. It wasn’t the tastiest broth, Lizzie had to admit. He looked close to angry on a couple of occasions, but was able to keep his cool; which was more than some of the maids they’d had could claim.

It was almost entertaining to see him deal with a child’s tantrum; had Ruby been a business partner, Lizzie was sure, he would have already put her in her place. But you can’t treat a child like a business partner - they do their own thing and though it would have been outrageous, had an adult done it, there was nothing you could do about it.

Ruby was being fussier than usual tonight, which was becoming more and more frequent, these days. She mostly screamed and threw tantrums without articulating her wishes; she didn’t speak much, either, these days. Lizzie knew the Lees were shooting them judgmental glances; at Ruby and most of all at Lizzie. When it had started, she’d blamed herself too. Edith had told her about a cousin of hers who was just like that, though, and it had reassured her, or maybe with time she’d stopped caring. You can’t blame yourself forever, probably, sometimes it just is what it is.

Tommy was staring at his daughter wide eyed, as if she were some kind of demon sitting on his lap and he was too terrified to even move. It made her smile a bit, a childish smile, in revenge - that he was now the victim of one of her tantrums, after so many months of convenient absences and mistresses and mysterious explosions in the damn barley field. She felt almost relieved that he was there to see it - he would be more understanding, maybe, next time.

Still, he waited and kept trying until he managed to feed her the content of a little more than half of the bowl. It was easier to feed her back at home, because the cook knew all the foods and their textures, which ones she liked and disliked. When he was done he let her rest on his knee, both tired from the tantrum, with a weird quiet, the kind that comes after the storm.

There was another thing Lizzie hadn’t missed - the way he’d surveyed their daughter for signs of bodily harm, and then held her in his arms, unfazed by the lack of a clear reaction from her.

Lizzie knew he loved his children somewhat equally, in the selfless and unconditional way fathers are supposed to love their children - as much as he was capable of, at least, and she never tried to ask him more than she knew he could give.

She knew he loved them in equal amounts, or as equal as he was capable of, although in different ways - Charlie, because he was a walking, talking reminder of what he’d almost had, of the person he’d worked so hard to become or at least to appear, and he had good blood in him, Charlie, a claim to the dignified and respectable existence that his father never had.

Ruby, because Lizzie had the creeping suspicion that Tommy knew she was more like him than her brother could ever be; he might have been thinking about his dead lover as he conceived her, but it was Lizzie he’d held as she cried and bled and pushed and then went too weak to do any of that. Not a drop of good blood in her, Ruby, the daughter of a Gypsy and a Small Heath whore - and an Italian immigrant, at least in spirit; but during visits and social occasions she was held by the maids right beside her half-brother and God forbid anyone say anything about that.

When she resisted the maid’s cuddles, or cried when anyone spoke to her too sweetly - all the reasons why Ruby was an unloveable child - Lizzie could see Tommy’s pride. The pride that had glistened in his eyes when he’d held her tiny body swaddled in pink on the stairs, in front of reporters, after becoming MP.

And Lizzie had scoffed then, still aching from the long months she’d been pregnant and alone and from their wedding, with its distinctive lack of fanfare. Still hurting from having been reminded once again of her rightful place, watching her husband swing their baby around like a glorified doll: _Look at your respectable Member of Parliament, so clean and distinguished, with his wife and child._

And she’d known, with absolute certainty - she and her daughter were merely means to an end, another tool in his arsenal like the razor blades on his old hat and the gun he kept in his holster at all times. They were a decoy, the stone on the outside of the house he’d built by himself, the respectable Member of Parliament, who was born on a narrowboat - the respectable Member of Parliament, who’d knocked up a whore by accident.

And had that been it, Lizzie could have lived with it. But she wasn’t so sure of that anymore.

Had Tommy been that man - it wouldn’t have been so hard, if he had. Had he been a monster, Lizzie could have at least cried. She would have been crying now, and wailing, and telling everyone that the boss had kidnapped her and was holding her hostage. Not that she’d followed him willingly, collecting the never ending trail of breadcrumbs the road to hell was apparently paved with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lizzie and Alfie together in the same scene! I love them both
> 
> More things will be happening soon, I promise. Thank you for reading, comments make writers very happy!


	4. A deal is made

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The difference between him and the Lees was - they lived their lives in vardos and camps, while he did not. He was a working man, and working men took holidays, but they always had to come back. Funny, for a Gypsy, to be bound so tightly to one place, but he was; and it had been stronger than his love for Grace once, although it still sounded impossible, when he’d rejected her proposal to move to the States together. Business was in Birmingham and now he had business to attend to._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally some Tommy POV in the second part! I find it much harder to write than Lizzie's.  
> Lizzie and Tommy talk - once again everyone is reminiscing about the past, but Tommy is finally able to see a certain someone to make a certain deal to advance the plot.

Tommy didn’t leave again the next day - perhaps worried about missing another development from the mysterious person he was set to meet. He just sat by the fire, on a folding chair, and smoked and sulked.

Lizzie sat by the fire as well, dreading the woods and the rides on horseback, in her horribly unpractical coat and heels. She’d brought a few novels and was working her way through the first one. Reading still didn’t come as naturally as she would have liked - Tommy’s remarks on her shoddy spelling were accurate, and hurtful; they both knew they were.

«Reading?» Tommy asked her after a while, after lunch.

«Yes,» she replied, wary, stil hurting perhaps. «Need new hobbies since I’m an MP’s wife, after all.»

«Do you like it?» he replied; he didn’t sound hostile, just curious. It was uncharted territory, for them; they’d never been the kind of people who read. She knew he’d quit school early too, to make a living and support his family every time Arthur Sr disappeared, just like she had left school early for an apprenticeship at a tailor shop, but maybe he’d been a better student than her; she’d never asked. Jo had always been the best student among the two of them, and her mother had always wanted her to become a typist, or a secretary, to work in an office - perhaps that was why Lizzie had taken that correspondence course, instead of asking for openings at BSA; one of the few times in her life she’d allowed herself to be ambitious.

«Learning to,» she replied in the end. «To like it,» she specified, because she could read well enough. «My sister loved reading. Me, not so much.»

«Didn’t know you had one,» he said. Which struck her as incredible - that after all these years, she’d managed not to mention Jo to him. How strange it must be for him to find out so casually; he was a family man, no doubt - a man who could only conceive himself in the context of kin.

Maybe it was a Gypsy thing, Lizzie had always thought, or a big families thing, because Lizzie had nobody left from hers other than an aunt she never heard from and the thought left her indifferent most days. She missed her sister, of course, and her mom and even her father, to an extent, although she didn't exactly remember him. Sometimes she felt sad about it, but it wasn’t a seemingly incurable sadness; it felt more like a winter evening, that you know is going to pass.

Since she’d stopped working in the streets and started working for Tommy, she'd remembered more and more about her childhood and of the girl Lizzie had been on track to become. But it felt distant, as if there was no point in remembering.

«Her name was Jo,» she revealed, trying her best to sound casual, because she was comfortable with the story now. She could think about her more easily, these days, and about her mother as well; she hadn’t been able to think about them at all when she’d been working. Her mother had just died when she’d begun, and she often dreamed of their faces - but she could never imagine their faces together with those of the johns she’d slept with. They would have been disappointed, definitely, and sad, or maybe even angry, and they would have requested explanations that Lizzie had been unable to give. So she’d stopped dreaming them.

«Was she younger?» Tommy inquired even further.

«She was older by four years. Died before the war. She was a consumptive. Ma wasn’t the same after she died.» Jo’s death had sent her mother to her early grave, Lizzie was sure; the war had done the rest. Lizzie’s cousin had died in France, the son of the aunt she still had. He was a tall boy with brown eyes; he'd died suddenly. While Jo had withered away slowly. Lizzie knew Tommy knew what that was like - the other girl had been a consumptive, the Italian, the one Tommy’d fucked in his head, when they had conceived their daughter. At first she hadn’t been mad; she’d been relieved, because it hadn’t been Grace, for once.

Then she’d been mad. But it had come later.

«’m sorry,» Tommy said, no doubt thinking about the Italian as well.

Lizzie shrugged. «It’s been a while.»

She closed the book on her lap. «She was always the smart one, Jo.» She wasn’t used to speaking like that to him - as if they were friends or acquaintances, bound by common courtesy, exchanging pleasantries and anecdotes about their own lives. Lizzie knew everything about Tommy’s life without asking, and Tommy knew nothing about hers and she didn’t particularly wish to share, at least usually.

They knew too much about each other, perhaps, and not only physically - there was nothing left to hide and discover, and it had always been secrets binding them together, more than the marriage certificate and the wedding bands. Secrets and clumsy attempts at hiding them, to turn themselves into better people. _We’re just rotten, as it is, my dear Tommy._

«Smarter than you, it would have been impressive,» he said, and she was flattered, and realized it was going to be just another breadcrumb. The few and far between good things he let out about her: how nice she looked in that dress, how the new hair suited her, how tight she was or how wet when they fucked - just breadcrumbs to him, that she gathered and stored in the safe in her heart. The safe she then weighed against the other one in her head; each time she found it was heavier than she thought.

«Almost named Ruby after her, when I was pregnant,» she revealed, which was never an easy topic to bring up, because he’d never once come to see her when she’d been carrying Ruby. Or, he’d come once, and then it had almost been too late. He’d waited patiently as she screamed - it had not been Lizzie’s first pregnancy, by quite a large margin, but it had been her first live birth. And that, as always, had redeemed him - one of the largest crumbs, almost an entire loaf of bread.

He’d been the first person to hold their daughter, if only for a few moments, before carefully placing her in her mother’s arms, against Lizzie’s bare chest; she’d been barely conscious but seeing her daughter all red and wet and shrieking had revived her for a while. He’d cut the chord connecting Ruby to Lizzie, given the crying baby his finger to hold.

«Wish I’d seen the great Lizzie Shelby pregnant,» he commented - was he thinking about that day too? Lizzie guessed they could joke about it now that Ruby was four years old.  
(You could have seen me, if you’d wanted to. I would have had you.)

Lizzie hadn’t been a Shelby at the time of Ruby's birth - it had happened a short time later, which meant that Ruby was technically born out of wedlock, though nobody cared about that, just like they never cared that Finn was born to a different mother from the rest of the siblings.

«You could have named her after your sister, you know. I wouldn’t have been mad,» he told her.

She shook her head, lightly, because that name had been a breadcrumb too - one that had come from his aunt, and not from him, but a breadcrumb nonetheless; at the time Lizzie thought that her child needed as much Shelby heritage as she could get.

«Did you look alike?» Tommy asked. Lizzie had to actively try to remember what Jo had looked like - the idea she had of her now barely more than a few fleeting moments, at the beach, or at church, both of them dressed nicely for the occasion. She remembered dark hair, and softer features than her own, a more womanly body, a bigger nose and sweet brown eyes.

«She looked like Ruby,» Lizzie replied, «same dark eyes.»

He nodded.

«Dresses funny, the Jew,» she said after a while, burning to know what Tommy actually thought of the man, hoping to reconstruct the image in his mind from the few glimpses he sometimes allowed her to see.

He didn't answer her directly, this time. «Don’t trust him, Lizzie,» he said. «He’s unpredictable. More than Arthur.»

She nodded, thinking she’d figured that one out. Unhinged, but at least he showed it, like Arthur - whereas she thought that Tommy had become unhinged too, these days, but he hid it behind perfectly ironed suits and his golden eye frames. Like the perfectly flat watery surface of a river, concealing the dangerous tides underneath. Perhaps it would have been easier it Tommy had been roaring water, like the Jew - waves and foam, and signs warning against getting too close.

«He’s been coming around often,» Lizzie pointed out «All the way here.»

«It’s business,» her husband replied.

«Maybe you’re growing on him,» she suggested, but then he looked absolutely floored by the implications.

Something inside of Lizzie’s head clicked - _You must have heard nothing at all about me, Mrs Shelby_ , the Jewish gentleman had said.

She laughed. She couldn’t imagine Tommy with a man if she tried - she knew he liked women, even though he was one of the loyal johns, who picked a favorite and quickly became regulars. But he knew there were men who preferred the company of other men - when she’d been a working girl, she’d sometimes seen her male counterparts, underneath the bridges or in a few specific pubs. There were fewer, but they weren’t hard to find, usually just as skinny and pale as the girls and with the same look in their eyes.

Tommy was looking at her as if she’d grown a new head, but he said nothing. They stayed like that, by the fire, for another while, and Lizzie even finished her novel.

Then the watch marked six in the afternoon and he got on his feet, walking to the edge of the forest. He didn’t need to tell Lizzie or the Lees to stay away.

«Took me long enough to find you,» the man said. Thomas believed he knew him, but he couldn’t quite place where he had first seen the distinguished gentleman in front of him; probably in the papers, or at Parliament, though he wasn’t there much of the time. He was smaller, as a man, than his name had led him to believe: short, stocky, and not very threatening, almost gentle looking, like a real life Santa Claus. He looked very out of place, among the wagons and the fires burning on scattered heaps of wood on the ground. «Had to hire the Jews. That was not cheap.»

«Quite the connections you have,» Tommy replied. The old man was not Jewish, and although he’d spoken against Mosley in public, even using somewhat harsh words, Tommy knew how rare it was for Solomons to cooperate with such characters. And the old man must have had connections higher up still - why had he even chosen Alfie Solomons to do this? Or had Alfie Solomons contacted him first?

«I have learned through my sources of your attempt on Oswald Mosley’s life,» the old man said straight away, looking pleased, if not with the end result, with the intent. As if he thought Tommy was being especially naïve, and because of it admirable. It had been a long time since Tommy had been an idealistic youth, so it annoyed him. He once again stopped in his tracks, the reminder of his failure sharp every time. «And what did you think of that?»

«Doing God’s work,» the man replied, frankly, the way older men often express admiration, pretending they were saying something unexpected, though Tommy knew perfectly well why he was there.

He figured it made sense. With the man’s affiliations and all, that he wanted Mosley and the BUF gone. He’d seen him sometimes in person as well, he remembered, he was in the other House.

«But even God failed,» Tommy replied.

«That's a shame,» the old man acknowledged. «The British Union of Fascists is now something we need to deal with.» He stated it matter-of-factly. There was something off about him, something that-

Tommy knew where he’d first seen him now. He’d gone to his house once, to ask for a favor when they'd first made it legal and they were just starting to make it big. He’d needed a favor - they needed help with some licenses and the man could help him. He’d liked Tommy, the old man. Lived in a house the size of Buckingham Palace and had maids for every little thing. A man who’s never had to cook his own food, Tommy had thought, he’d wondered whether he got dressed on his own, or if he had butlers for that, too.

Tommy had been a different man then, when the display of one’s wealth still disgusted him and made him uncomfortable at the same time. He had maids of his own now, though not butlers, and he’d never let anyone else dress him anyway, except maybe his wife. Unlike Grace, he’d let Lizzie do it, once or twice, maybe because she’d already seen all of him, anyway.

The man had been kind at the time of they first meeting. Straightforward and easy to deal with, as if he knew there wasn’t enough time in the world to play the more sophisticated games. He’d given them a price for the licenses and they’d made a good deal. Tommy would have returned, had the need arisen again.

«Do you believe you can help me like in the good old times? Do you reckon I’ll try again?» Tommy asked, finding himself unable to answer the last question as well. Finding the present hard enough without trying to make plans for the future.

«I have never once in my life heard of such plans,» the other man stated, and Tommy felt his heart sink a bit. All this way through the woods and mud, and for what, if he wasn’t even going to lend a hand? To aid God’s work?

«But it sounds like you experienced some leakage which compromised the operation,» the old man continued, «and I think I can help you find out who was responsible for that, Mr Shelby. What does that sound like?»

Tommy pretended to ponder, realizing he’d actually made up his mind the first time Alfie Solomons had come to the camp, with his cane and his monologues and his recent scar. No matter the price, he’d made up his mind.

«Such a bleeding heart,» he said, taking a cigarette from his case and turning his head to light it, determined not to give in too soon, to make the older man pay his price in full.

«Only one thing I ask in return,» the old man replied, ignoring Tommy’s game, straight to the point of retribution, «not as a politician, not as a businessman, but as a man. As a father. You have children, Mr Shelby?»

«Two,» he replied.

«Girls?»

«One.»

«Then you’ll understand where my request comes from - when she’s older, possibly.»

Tommy’s hand shook at that, as he took his cigarette case from his pocket and opened it with frozen hands to retrieve a stick. His hand shook as he lit it, the little girl’s cries at dinner still in his ears. And he’d raised quite a few children - Ada and Finn, many years before he even had children of his own; and they had been fussy and they had complained, but not as much as Ruby did. Regularly, apparently, given what the nurses reported to Lizzie every week. Lizzie had told him, sometimes, another few months and then we’ll start to worry, and then it was another few months past that. But she was his, his Ruby, his own flesh and blood, and she was Lizzie’s as well, and Lizzie herself was half of him these days.

The old man smiled at his uneasiness - he had no way to know his real thoughts; so he must have been assuming that his little speech had worked.

«A request which I figured would be useful to both of our families,» he added, moving his hands the way Tommy imagined that professors moved their hands during lectures.

He said families.

«As well as constitute the beginning of what, I hope, will be a long lasting alliance.»

He asked about Finn, Lizzie had said.

«Old fashioned, I see,» Tommy replied.

«My youngest daughter’s twenty this year, and unmarried,» he explained, looking at his hands, which were the well kept hands of someone who’s never known manual labour. «She’s well educated and pleasant enough. Can read Latin, but her piano’s shoddy. I know many sons who would be very glad to have her.» He was visibly proud as he listed the girl’s capabilities. Tommy wasn’t sure of what to do with a girl who could read Latin, but he feigned admiration anyway.

If she’s so great, why are you marrying her off to a Gypsy, Tommy wanted to ask, but saved it for a later day.

«And I’ve heard of the crash - I imagine that must have been hard for you, Mr Shelby; we’ll be able to offer a dowry. A house.»

«Sounds fair,» Tommy agreed, even though he really hadn’t lost that much in the crash; he knew it was unwise to leave all of his assets in the same place, so he hadn’t. Still, he’d lost a lot, and he would have been desperate, if it hadn’t happened so suddenly, had there been the time to take in the news properly. But now he found himself unable to care; they had enough to live comfortably and, most importantly, enough to keep going and make up for the losses, and that was good enough.

«I’ve been told doing business with you would be a pleasant affair, Mr Shelby,» the old man told him.

«And do you agree?» Tommy asked.

The old man seemed to weigh the question in his head, then nodded.

And so the deal was made.

Only then it sank on Tommy - that he felt ready to come back, and even if he didn’t, he had to come back now. Speak to Finn. Prepare him for the event.

Would he be mad about it, or would he be meek, Tommy leaned towards the latter, but couldn’t quite explain why.

Every time they did this - every time they left the city for the rivers and the roads and the wagons - it felt like some part of him emerged from deep inside, a part that he had to kill before returning to the city. It worked more slowly than the regular Tommy, adjusting its pace to that of the horses; it cherished the horses, cherished the land and cherished the rivers.

When the time came to kill it, the killing itself wasn’t painful, and it wasn’t even tragic, because that part of him just emerged again the next time he came back. So he’d learned to accept it, and to carve retreats out of his busy schedule, every once in a while, during more normal times, like in October. To visit his people and remember his roots, and teach his children about them as well. So that they could see the Lees and see where they came from.

(The difference between him and the Lees was - they lived their lives in vardos and camps, while he did not. He was a working man, and working men took holidays, but they always had to come back. Funny, for a Gypsy, to be bound so tightly to one place, but he was; and it had been stronger than his love for Grace once, although it still sounded impossible, when he’d rejected her proposal to move to the States together. Business was in Birmingham and now he had business to attend to.)

«What did he want from Finn?» Lizzie wanted to know as soon as he came back. It was dark now, and it was really easy to stumble and fall, if one wasn’t familiar with the terrain. Tommy had learned early on how not to stumble and fall in the forest, in the clearings, in the muddy earth by the rivers, but Lizzie had not; she was a city girl, his Lizzie, who’d seen the grey blocks and the black water of the docks before the trees and the birds and the rivers, so now she thought that was how the world was supposed to look like.

When they stayed with the Lees she always sat near the wagons in the evenings, by the fire, sometimes attempting to read, although it always got too dark, and cold, despite the fire.

«Do you remember John and Esme?» he asked her.

She squinted, then nodded. He wondered whether she was still angry at him over her marriage with John that never happened, or the way he’d made sure it wouldn’t happen. If she had, it would have been understandable. She hadn't loved John - not the way she loved him, anyway; John might have loved her, but he'd recovered quickly enough with his Esme. Maybe Finn would be happy with this girl as well.

«You’ve arranged your brother’s marriage?» Lizzie asked him, incredulous.

Tommy lit another cigarette.

«Who is she?» Lizzie wanted to know.

«The daughter of a very powerful man,» Tommy said.

She laughed, throwing her head back and closing the book she’d given up on trying to read long ago.

«You won’t even have to lie, with him,» she told him, «he’ll do anything you ask him to do. How much is he paying, anyway?»

Tommy exhaled, before answering: «A mansion and a piece of information.»

Lizzie looked no longer amused.

«Keep him out of this,» she said, and he didn’t reply, knowing he could not say, I will, and that she knew it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things are finally happening! With this chap the first part is over. They’ll be back to Arrow House next chapter.  
> I have about 8 chapters written and still some to write.  
> Thank you all for your kind comments <3


	5. Of gifted horses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _«I want you to have a choice, Lizzie. If you want to go, you’re free to do it. You’ve done enough, as it is, and I owe you too much.»_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here I am! I’ve been in exam hell - I still am in exam hell unfortunately and writing has been such a pleasant distraction.
> 
> Not quite plot yet, but a scene I found I needed to write. Back to Lizzie's pov!

They came back to Arrow House just in time for Christmas. The previous week, Lizzie had been driven to the nearest town by a young gypsy who never shut up, to place some orders and purchase new clothes for Ruby, and the presents. Yet another horse, she’d joked with Tommy, while trying to get an opinion out of him on the subject of his own children’s Christmas presents. She personally thought they owned more than enough animals at Arrow House - what with the horses, and Cyril who might as well have been one, for how large he was.

Tommy knelt to pet him, as soon as Johnny Dogs dropped them off in front of the mansion. Cyril always seemed to know that they were coming, and trotted outside to greet Tommy every time. He came to greet Lizzie, too, more enthusiastically when the children were with her. Dogs left her lukewarm, but he’d become a presence in her life, so she scratched his large head between the ears and babbled nonsense at him, as if he were an especially large toddler. Even when he tried to run towards them, it looked like he was too heavy to do it properly.

After Tommy, it was Ruby’s turn to greet him - Cyril was by far her favorite inhabitant of the mansion. She hugged his neck carelessly, which had scared Lizzie at first, but now she knew he’d never harm her.

Once Cyril was satisfied, they knew Edith was there to welcome them, as soon as they walked into the house. She took the duffel bag from Lizzie’s hand immediately - in her mind it was probably offensive that she had carried it in the first place. Lizzie found it amusing that once upon a time she would have killed for the life her maids now had.

«You came back on such a short notice,» Edith was saying, still carrying the bag, «but we managed to find a chef. Mrs Shelby, he wants your opinion on the main course.»

«I’m sure it will be fine, Edith,» Lizzie tried to reply, because she ate mostly everything and so did Tommy, the few times he actually ate. Charlie was picky, and Ruby complained before eating almost anything, so Lizzie had long since given up on trying.

But the look on Edith’s face was one she recognized - a secret women’s speak, perhaps, like when the other girls had begged her for a diversion, to escape a violent john. So she followed her maid to the kitchen in the bowels of Arrow House, where the cook was working quietly, apparently unaware that he’d asked for someone’s opinion.

«We are glad to have you back, Mrs Shelby,» Edith prefaced. «We were truly worried when you left so abruptly…»

Lizzie was reasonably sure that the maids knew nothing about Tommy’s attempt, or what had almost been Tommy’s attempt; but they hadn’t missed - couldn’t have - Tommy’s decline. It had been gradual, and it had gone on for so long that Lizzie must have let down her guard; or maybe she’d seen him too often and too closely and she’d stopped noticing. To let him walk to the barley field alone, after the rally that night.

«Needed the fresh air, that’s all,» Lizzie explained.

«And you don’t mind joining your husband and his… family?» Edith inquired. They’d been nothing but respectful of Tommy’s heritage - money was money, Lizzie figured pretty soon; but in Edith’s case, it wasn’t just that. She’d grown fond of Johnny Dogs and of Polly and of the tales she rarely told when she came to visit, especially when she was drunk and feeling particularly intimate with the spirits.

It wasn’t about the Gypsies, Lizzie realized, or maybe it was, just a bit - but mostly, it was about him. Edith was worried she’d been taken against their own will.

«Seriously, Edith, it’s fine. We needed a break. Both of us.»

Which was true enough - she couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t needed a break. Every step she’d taken, as she’d ascended that ladder from the slums to Arrow House… it had been temporary relief, immediately followed by more heartache.

Never enough for her to wish to go back, though.

«I’m glad,» Edith replied, looking sincerely relieved, «and really glad you’re back. Hope your sojourn was a nice one and that it helped.»

«It was really nice,» Lizzie replied, in a kinder tone than usual, but she didn’t comment on the second part of Edith’s statement.

«Mr Shelby…»

«He’s on the mend, » Lizzie said, which wasn't exactly faithful to what she had observed, but it still implied that he needed to be mended - which was something she’d never say lightly.

Edith understood. «I see,» she said. «I could take care of the children for you a bit more, in the upcoming days,» she offered. «To leave you more time for yourselves in the holidays.»

She was looking down at her hands now, looking embarrassed. Once upon a time Lizzie hadn’t thought herself capable of treating staff badly, but then she had done it, when a maid had misplaced all of her jewelry while cleaning, causing Lizzie to have a small heart attack. She was sure that all the servants in the house remembered that night all too well. So she guessed she knew where that fear came from.

«It’s been a hard year, I’ve heard about… the crash,» Edith was saying, blushing slightly, «if you believe it could help… my father often had somber moods. My mother used to send me and my brothers to an aunt when it happened…»

Lizzie smiled, because she thought she understood how exceptional such recounting of Edith’s childhood memories must have been. She tried to imagine Edith and her brothers; in her mind, they were the happy family she’d fantasized about. Had the Starks been one too - perhaps she would have been more attentive towards her husband, spoken kindly to him a bit more, and, if not alright, it would have been just a little less painful.

She wondered how Edith could be so stupid as to not see how they were not a normal happy family; but then again, they’d always tried so hard to look like they were in front of the servants, not even allowed to acknowledge their reality in their own home.

Finally, she found it a bit offensive, Edith’s suggestion that the children were currently in the way of Tommy’s peace of mind, that there was no time or space in their lives for Charlie’s questions about his mum and Ruby’s oddities and little games, teaspoons turned into rifles, toy horses shot at close range and she never cried. But she knew Edith was right.

«I’d appreciate that,» she replied at last.

Christmas came and the kids were overjoyed with their presents.

A new violin for Charlie - which had been Lizzie’s idea, the one Tommy had had the strongest positive reaction to, which was as close to an agreement as she was going to get. So she’d ordered the violin and signed in his name. Maybe Tommy hoped that with a new violin, his son’s playing would improve. This one was bigger, because Charlie was becoming bigger too. One day he’d be all grown up, and although he looked more like Grace than like his father, it didn’t bother Lizzie much.

Ruby got a new doll, and a toy dog she fell immediately in love with. If the decision had been up to Tommy, it would have been a toy horse, but Lizzie was becoming tired of horses and she'd decided that her daughter liked dogs, although she didn't really express her likes and dislikes so eloquently yet. Dogs left Lizzie lukewarm, but Ruby seemed to truly love Cyril, which had to mean that Ruby liked dogs. She liked the toy dog, at any rate.

Tommy looked at the events unfold from his favorite armchair, a glass of whiskey in his hand. He moved it around the way men did, watched the liquid move around like waves in a storm. It was celebration, Lizzie figured, which was different from drinking alone. Or so she hoped.

He helped her take the children to bed afterwards, allowing Ruby to keep the toy dog in her cot because she didn’t seem willing to part from it.

«You must give him a name,» he told her.

«’s a girl,» Ruby informed him. Speaking was rare for her and her little voice filled Lizzie with joy.

«Her, then,» her father replied, his voice low and reassuring - it, too, filled Lizzie with some kind of emotion, though not joy. Worse than joy, it made her throat become narrow and made it harder to breathe.

«Stella,» Ruby declared, which was the name of one of the Lee girls at the camp. She must have heard it, Lizzie thought.

«That's a nice name,» her father agreed. He spoke softly to the children, and frankly, as if he was constantly going to reveal some big hidden truth.

Then he tucked Ruby in.

Lizzie watched from the doorstep, too afraid to ruin the moment to get closer - thinking this must be another one of those glimpses, of those breadcrumbs he sometimes dropped. Cyril and her, they were not so different in the end - just like him, she walked in circles around the breakfast table in anticipation, waiting for him to drop another crumb; she’d done it for ten years.

He took her hand as he walked away - led them to their bedroom, and Lizzie let him drag her along, as if she was indifferent to it anyway.

«I have another thing for you, Lizzie,» he told her. He’d given her a bracelet in front of the children, earlier - another item on the list of valuables he’d given her since they’d married. The list was endless and it ranged from necklaces to dresses, cigarette cases with her initials on it, which worked with both her surnames, she’d noticed, shoes and coats, although never rings; another line they’d silently agreed upon. The only ring was the one she was wearing, plain gold, for show, but not cheap.

Another bracelet then, perhaps, or a coat, or a fancy dress for the upcoming occasions, or something more intimate, that he couldn’t show her in front of the children -

He walked to the desk they kept in their room and opened a drawer, took a heavy looking envelope from it.

«What’s that, Tommy?» Lizzie asked, wary.

Maybe just stocks, or a share of the company, which would have mattered little, given Lizzie’s current standing in it. Maybe a letter, like the one she’d written him mere months ago.

«I signed,» he said instead.

«What did you sign?»

«The papers,» he replied, as if it were obvious which papers he was talking about.

«The papers,» she replied.

«I want you to have a choice, Lizzie. If you want to go, you’re free to do it. You’ve done enough, as it is, and I owe you too much.»

He spoke firmly, holding out the envelope for her to take.

She took it, opening it with shaky hands - inside were papers just like the ones she’d had to go all the way to London to acquire; they’d been made in Birmingham this time, by a lawyer who had refused to take Lizzie’s case, and they were signed. Waiting for her approval - or maybe not; maybe he wasn’t giving her a choice after all.

«You’re kicking me out, Tommy? On Christmas day?» She could feel her hands shake and her lip quiver and her heart beat too high up in her chest, near her throat. She could see herself in the streets on Christmas Day - maybe her luck had just run out; that would have been fair, perhaps. He’d keep their daughter, because he’d never let his own child live in the streets. Although Lizzie still owned the house he’d bought her, before inexplicably changing his mind.

Then she looked at him and was relieved when she saw that he looked like the ground had suddenly disappeared from underneath his feet.

«Lizzie…» he looked like he was struggling for words.

«If you never wanted me in the first place, I already had a house - then why…»

«I want you to have a choice,» he repeated. «Last time around, however you got those papers. Did you go to London to find an attorney? That ain’t a choice, innit?»

Which was surprisingly self aware, if anything; Lizzie stood there with her arms crossed, a chill down her back, wondering how she could have been so foolish - expecting another bracelet, or a coat.

(She had gone to London, not once but three times, before finding a lawyer who was willing to do it; it hadn’t been cheap.)

«If you want my choice,» she said in the end, «I already made it. And I told you, the last time.»

She closed the envelope again as tight as she could, then threw it on the desk it had come from, behind Tommy’s back.

«Maybe you’d reconsidered.» He didn’t need to explicitly state what could have made her reconsider. The night in the barley field was still in the air between them; the weeks they’d spent with the Lees had been their version of a hospital stay.

«No.» She took a deep breath, asking a God she didn’t really believe in to give her the strength for another match - just as uneven as the ones before, and just as hopeless.

«You said you still paid me for it. Do you remember?»

He looked truly ashamed now - as if he was remembering the nerve he’d struck; Lizzie didn’t know whether he’d thrown that particular one lightly, which would have been so unlike him - or if he’d known, perfectly well, that it was the worst thing he could possibly said, and then he’d said it exactly because of it.

«I didn’t mean…»

«You said it,» she replied. «Do you even want this at all, Tom? Or are you just too proud to let go?»

He looked properly floored now, lost in the dark. In the mist. He’d hugged her stomach once, sitting down by the bed as she stood in front of him, like a child begging his mother for forgiveness. _Don’t say these things_ , he’d said then, probably in lieu of an actual defense. «Of course I want this, Lizzie,» he replied now, and his voice sounded the same as back then.

«So if this is a transaction, Tom, a stock market or whatever it is that companies do…»

«You weighed your heart against your head and valued your head just a tiny bit more,» he completed, which took her by surprise - he had listened. He still looked unsure of their meaning, but he repeated her words.

«And I decided to continue to take the payment,» Lizzie finished for him.

He still seemed to dislike any references to what he’d said. «Even if I was - I could never pay you back in full, Lizzie,» he whispered.

«That balance hasn’t changed. Much.» Lizzie was floored by the sadness in his eyes, like he was faced with a problem he knew had no solution. And that one, their particular problem - it didn’t have a solution, or maybe what they had now was as close to a solution as they would ever get. Lizzie loved him and he did not love her back. Lizzie would start to love him less someday, inevitably, and things would be more or less alright.

Or they’d divorce, or he’d get killed. Maybe she’d get killed. Sometimes she hoped for both of them to die, then felt ashamed of it.

(In an ambush, killed by the Italians as they drive.)

«But the balance could change,» Tommy pointed out. Lizzie knew what he meant, and didn’t like it - she pictured another barley field; but she was too far away this time, or asleep, only the scarecrow was there to dissuade him. She wanted them to die, but not really and not like this. Another Grace or another rally or another Luca Changretta, it was a matter of when rather than if.

«My answer’s still yes,» Lizzie said. «And the conditions haven’t changed.»

Though she knew there hadn’t been anyone else since the Communist, though she knew infidelity wasn’t the problem - not the main one, anyway; that she could have lived with a picture perfect husband who fucked the Communist behind his wife’s back, and that she wasn’t living now.

«You didn’t tell me about the rally that night,» she stated. Not even she was sure of what she meant by that. A recrimination, perhaps, an acknowledgement that he’d failed her and dishonored his promise. To be fair, he’d only said he would try, and Lizzie hadn’t even expected him to do that.

«You were at Charlie’s violin thing,» he told her, «during the family meeting. If you’d been there, you would have known, Lizzie. It wasn’t on purpose. You know you’re kin. More than anyone else has ever been.»

She sighed, though she didn’t miss the last part. «You said you didn’t tell me because you wouldn’t have survived being betrayed by your wife.»

«Perhaps I was relieved you weren't there to hear,» he conceded, voice so low she had to tune out the sound of the wind and the fire and the horses.

«That was one time,» she decided, and he nodded, walking closer to her and hugging her tight. He was shorter than her and he buried his face between her breasts, letting her hold him like a mother with her child.

«I’ll be better,» he whispered against her chest, «for you, Lizzie. I wish I could pay you back for real.»

She stroked his head and sighed deeply. «I decided one day I wasn’t going to expect more than what’s possible, and I’m not going to start now.»

So she took the envelope and dropped it in the fireplace; then watched it burn until it was no longer recognizable, and decided to shelf that away.

«I want this to be nice,» he said once it was ash, wrapped his arm around her waist and began kissing her clavicle through the dress, lightly at first, then almost biting the fabric as he cupped her breasts, «I want this to be as nice as our first time as husband and wife.»

Which was a memory he hadn’t brought up in a long time - more than four years they’d been married, he’d only mentioned that night a couple of times. Which wasn’t much, given how carefully he seemed to have thought it through.

Their wedding had been a rather depressing affair; his whole family had been there and Jeremiah had once again officiated, and there had been no one on Lizzie’s side. She’d only invited a couple of girls from her working days; she would have invited a third if she hadn’t died a few months earlier. With her father and mother and sister long dead - her aunt still lived at the seaside, but she had cut ties long ago with a niece who worked in the streets - Lizzie’s people had slowly become the Shelbies and the Shelbies alone, and those they attracted.

And the few times she’d tried to befriend someone else, everyone in Birmingham knew how that had turned out.

She’d worn white and someone somewhere had joked about a whore getting married in white; laughed like Tommy had laughed when John had first told him he was planning to marry her. White like she’d worn at Epsom, and that had also turned out quite badly. Sometimes Lizzie wondered why she still tried.

The ceremony had been short and the vows essential, and afterwards he’d kissed her more fondly than she’d expected. To be fair, she hadn’t expected a kiss at all. Utilitarian, she had expected something purely functional to whatever his dark plan was, a wedding stripped down to its bare essentials, a piece of paper saying he could claim he had a wife.

On the day of their wedding Tommy hadn’t looked unhappy, just meek, while Lizzie had looked absolutely uncomfortable and the guests had noticed. The happiest person in the room had been Polly; for a long time Lizzie had thought that the entire marriage had been her idea. Now she didn’t think that anymore. She’d just happened to look happier than the bride and groom themselves.

Ada had offered to look after Ruby that night - the first night Lizzie had spent away from her daughter since the terrible night she’d given birth to her. She was expecting a drink, a nice fuck in one of the houses Tommy owned, perhaps the one he’d bought especially for her before buying the ring and announcing a change of plans, but he had surprised her when he’d driven the other way.

He’d driven through some fields, underneath the night sky - it was late in the summer and the air was warm, though the breeze made it pleasant; it had reminded Lizzie of being young, long summer nights during and right after the war, the way her joints had been more flexible and the johns had smelled of sweat.

Back then, marrying a rich man who also happened to be Tommy had been her absolute dream: now she had, by all means, accomplished it, and she could only look at the stars and feel nothing at all.

Eventually Tommy had stopped, yards away from the river, a river she knew he was familiar with. He’d walked to the shore and taken off his jacket, laying it down on the ground, then looked at Lizzie expectantly, implicitly ordering her to sit on it. He didn’t need to speak to order people around; his eyes usually sufficed.

She’d obeyed, and he had taken a bottle from behind his back - it must have been in the car; in the dark, she hadn’t seen him pick it up. There, by the river, it had felt like they were strangers again, like when they’d first started fucking. Lizzie was so used to the more recent past - to Epsom, and all hat had followed - that such ancient times felt so far away, like they belonged to other people and not to them. To think that there had been a time when they’d fucked, but kissing was still prohibited.

They weren’t husband and wife, as they drank by the river for their first night of marriage - they were comrades, perhaps, business associates, partners in crime. Lizzie had ended up getting her hair dirty anyway, too tall and awkward for the jacket alone, as he’d fucked her until she was screaming, making her come with his mouth afterwards.

Then they’d walked back to the car and he’d driven to Arrow House, which was now, for all intents and purposes, Lizzie’s house as well - whatever the whole thing had meant, he’d never cared to explain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo here we are. After the whole plot arc with Linda and Lizzie obtaining divorce papers, it felt right.
> 
> Big things happening in the next chapter (finally, one could say, as we're like, 19k words in). Thank you for reading xx


	6. Young love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, things are happening! This is the first chapter I wrote like two months ago, so I had to straight up rewrite a few parts before posting because they didn’t match the tone of the story anymore. I'm still not 100% satisfied with it, and it's also longer than the others.
> 
> Tommy's POV; cw for misogynistic thoughts, as well as some homophobic language, all fairly period-typical, sadly.  
> (Tommy/Alfie if you squint... it was accidental but I decided to keep it.)

Tommy awoke quietly, early in the morning of one of the warmest days of the year so far. Sunlight was shining through the window casting its light on the sheets underneath which his wife was still sleeping. It was still early, and he wanted to let her sleep. He freshened up and put on one of his fanciest suits, the one he reserved for certain special occasions. Today was one of such occasions; hanging on the door of her wardrobe, Lizzie had picked out a nicer dress for the event. She had a few of those, now, stored nicely in their wardrobes and ironed by the maids, dresses made for her and her alone, that had never been worn by anyone else, never too short on her long and boyish frame. Lizzie was going to look the part, wasn’t she; with the jewelry he’d bought her and short hair exposing the long neck she’d been born with.

Finn Shelby was going to be sent on a mission to the altar today, at almost twenty-two years old. His bride was merely nineteen and the daughter of a man who held more power than Tommy and Mosley put together; in twelve hours he’d legally own a mansion and more staff than the rest of his family combined. His baby brother was going to be a husband, and Tommy couldn’t really bring himself to care - or to feel anything at all.

That’s what hit him the most, early in the morning of that terse spring day: it felt palpable, like something in the air, like the air itself had grown thicker between him and the external world. Nothing came in or out, making him wonder what everybody else felt, if they felt the same things as he did - if he’d ever feel the way the others felt ever again. He’d never given it much thought, but it was starting to bother him now.

As for the girl herself, he knew next to nothing about her. At least she was a Catholic, Pol had commented on the phone when Thomas had been able to reach her to tell her about the marriage he’d just arranged. He knew her father loved her dearly, perhaps, and that maybe his brother would love her too. He found it didn’t really matter.

He picked up Arthur first, then drove to the house in Small Heath where his youngest brother still lived, while smoking the day’s first cigarette. The thick air was warm and apart from its density, it didn’t feel different from any other spring day he’d ever lived though; unlike with John, there had been no lies and there was going to be no fanfare. Tommy was fairly sure he couldn’t take it.

He slammed the door to wake his brother, then handed him the suit and the boutonnière - which confirmed his intentions in Finn’s mind, perhaps; at any rate he obeyed.

Finn hadn’t known for sure beforehand, but it had been in the air - Tommy asking him about girls; the encounter the women had arranged with a prostitute a few months before, that was also probably linked to the matter at hand in his brother's head, although it had had nothing to do with it at the time. Tommy hadn’t even known about the old man at the time, or about the women’s plot to make his brother lose his virginity, although he and Arthur should have taken care of that first. Finn had never really been part of his plan, in any way that mattered.

On Boxing Day, which was for them a sad recurrence now - when Thomas had told Finn that it was time for him to get a wife, and when he’d added that he had a good candidate already in mind, Finn hadn’t complained, or said anything at all. And he had questioned them before - he’d been silenced, because he was still too young to get a say (though at his age he and Arthur had had more than a say). But he’d complained, and raised questions and doubts, sometimes childish, sometimes not so much. He’d caught bullets and had them removed if not with grace, with dignity, at least.

He didn’t say anything that morning, just put on his suit while Tommy drank tea.

As Thomas drove his remaining brothers to the country estate the bride’s father had so generously offered, private church and all, he didn’t think much about it either. He did not think about the bride at all.

He had never seen her either, bar one time when she had still been a little girl. He’d gone to the old man's house for business, after being invited by the man himself; he’d offered him liquor. Women’s voices could be heard through the walls of the mansion, maids, he’d realized - he’d had no maids back in those days - and perhaps a wife, a few kids, a couple of them around Tommy’s age, then the little girl. Looking at little girls had never been a habit of his, and he barely remembered what she had looked like; he’d scared her, perhaps, and she’d hidden from him. Even then he hadn't given her much thought.

A wedding was never a dark day, Tommy thought. At his age, and having lived through two of his own special days, it was to be expected that they had lost their shine; but weddings they sell were. He knew that Arthur had made a silent promise to make the day as good as humanly possible for their only remaining brother; yet Tommy had had to constantly remind himself of what day it was, the date constantly slipping his mind.

Finn was fiddling, in the back seat of the car, on his way to his own wedding, twisting his hands and wetting his lips and fixing his tie, and the boutonnière. It would have made their father happy, to see the baby of the family all grown up, or perhaps to see the mansion his future wife owned, her dowry and her connections. It would have made Finn’s mother happy, wherever she was.

Tommy was looking at his brother now, in the passenger seat, out of the corner of his left eye, wondering whether he’d ever looked so young as well, once upon a time, before the war. Finn looked like the rest of them a fair amount, and they generally agreed that he resembled Ada the most; the rest of him must have been his mother’s.

They didn’t even know her name - before the war, Tommy had once figured that if they’d gathered their father and every single one of the siblings, and subtracted everything about them, together with everything they’d all inherited from their mother, from Finn, whatever remained, that would have been an accurate portrayal his mother. Of half of her, at any rate, only the traces she’d left in the form of his brother. The rest was probably lost for good, but half would have been better than nothing.

It wasn’t really feasible, and they’d never really tried.

Finn had asked about his mother, as a little boy, seeing everyone mourn a woman who’d died years before he was even born - he’d figured it out, because Finn wasn’t stupid. He’d asked about her and when no one had been able to give him a straight answer, Polly had told him to drop it. He had. He was obedient, Finn.

(Though Tommy had seen that look in his eyes, when Polly had found her Michael - when Michael had found Polly. But he’d said nothing, thinking, rightfully, that he had no way to find his mother now, that there was no point in trying.)

They left the car just outside the tall gates. The mansion was much smaller than Tommy remembered, though still impressive; the maids had ceased to be a source of entertainment for Tommy, they’d become part of the background. There was a fountain at the entrance with a statue in the middle of it, that Tommy had never forgotten. He’d once despised all displays of wealth; that hadn’t turned out as expected.

The man welcomed him with an arm on his shoulder, much to Arthur’s scoffing. He looked overjoyed, and was peeking at Finn who was walking behind them. They should have said something, perhaps words of reassurance. Tommy sometimes felt like his brother had already lived it all through them, and that there was nothing left for him to experience for the first time; and then the divide between those who had been to war and those who had not had managed to push them even further apart. As if Finn was now condemned to live half of everything, of those events they had lived fully back in their days.

They walked through the grass to the private chapel, the old man attempting to make small talk, Arthur unusually silent, because he knew that Tommy didn’t want him to talk. Outside, tables covered in white fabric and fine cutlery had been positioned overlooking the country below, with wooden chairs in circles all around them.

Inside the private chapel, the pews were already occupied by the guests. On the left side the bride’s family; on the right, the Shelbies. And they must have looked so different from what the old man remembered; they looked different from how Tommy himself remembered them.

Ada had come from London, stomach so full she looked about to burst, and how different this was from ten years and a child ago, Freddie still living, the bonfires and the bottles shared with the Gypsies; it hadn’t been so stiff then, and Tommy had still been able to feel something. The air had been light, easier to breathe in, and he’d been lighter as well, and not only because of the years.

Beside Ada was Polly, freshly out of her black mourning clothes; next to her Michael, as well as Gina. Tommy saw that her stomach was swollen, though not as much as Ada’s. He’d doubted the veracity of her claim back then, and was now somewhat relieved that she hadn’t lied.

Near the middle, where the path to the altar had been covered with fabric for the groom and bride to walk on, Lizzie sat with her back straight as a rod, clad in her light blue dress. Tommy knew his place was beside her. Some had said - sometimes with good intentions, sometimes not so much - that in spite of everything, Lizzie Shelby knew how to look the part. They never explicitly said what they meant by _in spite of everything_ \- he knew they wouldn’t dare; but he was aware.

He sat by Lizzie's side as Arthur walked their youngest brother to the altar, fixed his tie and boutonnière and whispered something. Tommy regretted not speaking to Finn earlier, but it wasn’t as deeply felt as he’d hoped.

As Arthur sat down next to him, Lizzie slid her hand into his, knowing he could not refuse to hold it in public, and so he held it, though her cold hands in his were too large and well known, the entire scene too well rehearsed and his ears warm, almost ringing, and the air -

It was so thick he could not move; he knew - it hadn’t been so long - what, _who_ usually came after the air became sticky, when all the sounds became so distant, chattering noises from London’s finest performing its version of small talk turned into voices from a French village far away. And everything is covered in mist, or it’s smoke, and he can see a hint of gold through the mist. Golden hair, styled in loose curls. Tiny hands piercing through the mist.

Then the priest started talking, asking for silence. Everyone obeyed; the chattering stopped, the village went dark, with everyone asleep. And then Lizzie’s hand, large and well known - he focused on her fingers and palm, the solid weight beside him, other men would have said _ball and chain_ : but Lizzie was an anchor. Sitting still, eyes sharp.

The old man himself was walking his daughter down the altar.

The girl on his arm was small, with an elaborate nest of dark hair on her head, a dress full of lace and ribbons and an unreadable expression. She was very young, and probably full of dreams and ideals that were incompatible with the life that had just been chosen for her; but Tommy couldn’t accept that she was someone, too, that there was enough room in the world for someone else.

She was the apple of her father’s eye, that much he could tell, perhaps spoiled in a way Finn had never been, what with being born rich and all. The old man kissed his young daughter’s head before stepping back. The priest began to speak again, and this time, Tommy knew the script.

They all loved Finn; and they had been better at showing it, once upon a time. Finn had been Arthur Sr’s parting gift, in a way, from the last winter he’d come back carrying the child of some unknown woman in his arms; born too late to see what their family had been like in that mythical golden age that even Ada had barely been able to see, too late for the vardos, too late for the narrowboats, even too late to remember what the world had been like before the war. He’d been just a child when they’d left and a slightly larger child when they’d come back, smaller and frailer than the rest of them, like his forgotten mother, perhaps. Maybe his parentage, or his age, or maybe a little bit of both, set him apart; but he was a Shelby too.

The year Finn was born, Arthur Sr had sworn to stay, and only a short time afterwards he’d left again, taking a bag full of cash and leaving the infant with them in return. Arthur Jr had raised him more like a father than like a brother - a decent one, even, almost good, perhaps as good as a father as Shelby men could be. They’d been poor and money had been tight, but Finn had been happy and well cared for.

And now he stood at the altar, taking a first indecisive peak at the woman he was going to marry and spend the rest of his life with, a woman he’d never even seen; barely a woman, more like a girl, fresh out of boarding school. But Thomas wasn’t anxious, not the way he had been when John had first seen his Esme. They’d liked each other well enough, at the time. Finn seemed to like his own bride as well, or at least he smiled. The girl blushed and smiled back.

An apparently unending ceremony later, they were married. They kissed, which made them laugh, because they had never seen each other before. They were young, and unaware, and it lacked gravitas, but it was as binding as any other marriage, Tommy thought, and for a second it felt unfair.

«Congratulations,» the old man said to Thomas afterwards, his face still red and eyes watery from emotion. «A fine young man for my Maggie. This is going to be mutually beneficial,» he said, and Thomas wondered what the last part was about - a promise, or a threat.

Polly also came to greet him.

That was strange in itself, that she approached him first. They hadn’t spoken since before that fateful night. Before that, the noose - and every time she’d probably sworn she’d never speak to him again, and yet every time she still did.

«Nice upgrade,» she said in lieu of a greeting. «What did he offer you in return?»

They were past pleasantries.

«In case you hadn’t noticed,» he said, looking up; he didn’t need to raise his arm to show her the surroundings, the mansion behind her that could have easily put Arrow House to shame. A proper mansion, like the one May Carleton had lived in. Maybe Maggie would have been Finn’s May Carleton, or maybe his Lizzie - Thomas found himself unable to think of marriage or women in other ways than those he was already familiar with. Best case scenario, she could have been an Esme, but God shield them from another Linda. There was no room left in the world for more names, more women. All the spots were taken.

«Without the trouble of a rich wife for yourself,» Polly agreed. He didn’t take offense - he remembered how pleased Polly had been when he’d told her about his intentions of proposing to his Lizzie.

«What did he offer you in return?» Polly asked again.

«He’s high up, Pol,» he replied, smoking the last of his cigarette, then throwing the butt into the carefully maintained grass. «He knows things.»

«It’s the fascist again?» she asked, but he knew an answer wasn’t required.

As they ate, he witnessed Maggie’s first attempts at getting to know the Shelbys; as if there was much left to get to know. It didn’t help that she’d apparently decided to start out with Gina Gray. Afterwards Maggie approached her new husband, inviting him to dance. He seemed happy to comply, and wrapped an arm around his new wife's waist. They could have looked intimate enough to someone unfamiliar with the situation. Thomas cursed inwardly, wondering when he’d failed to reprimand his brother for not behaving like a man. There had been times when he and Arthur had worried about him, but he seemed to have turned out just fine, all things considered. 

There’s always a pansy brother, Arthur had said the first time, when Finn had been thirteen. There always was. Tommy doubted that, even though Finn hadn’t really been a man, the first time he’d been with a prostitute. Maybe he was just a better man than them.

(Though Solomons had made him reconsider his stance on such men - or pansies, as Arthur called them. No one would have called Solomons a pansy; Solomons was a God now.)

He could feel himself become rigid, as he stood up. He’d eaten everything he’d been served, which was a rare occurrence nowadays. Lizzie looked pleased. It made him feel good to please her, whatever it meant; sometimes he felt like he was driving through the mist, all day, every day. The road was difficult and poorly lit but sometimes, on the easier stretches, he knew he could just give her the wheel, just for a bit, let himself be driven around, to rest his eyes.

Lizzie even tried to dance with him afterwards, but his eyes were skimming the crowd. He would have danced with her, probably, had it been a real wedding. Had he met her in another time and had they been other people, he would have taken her to the river every night, like he’d taken her in her bedroom almost every night for a week a few times after the war, but he wouldn’t have paid her.

«Who are you looking for?» Lizzie asked eventually.

«A guest,» he replied.

«You invited Mosley, didn’t you?» Lizzie asked. She didn’t look happy about it - quite the opposite; but she also looked like she knew she had no right to be upset about it. Resigned. Hers was another life he’d single-handedly destroyed, he thought - and yet there she was by his side. Why they kept doing it, he couldn't tell.

«I tried to sabotage him, Lizzie. He suspects nothing. And must continue to do so.»

And finally he saw it, the slicked back black hair, his mustache that he’d grown to despise. Mosley saw him too, and quickly walked in their direction with a smile plastered on his face. He was holding a drink and looked like it wasn’t his first.

«Congratulations,» he said, almost forcefully taking Lizzie’s hand to kiss it, lingering with his mouth on her wrist a second too long for Tommy’s liking. He wondered whether he knew about the attempt, knew that Tommy had to be even more careful around him now, which allowed him to take a few liberties he wouldn’t have otherwise taken. Whether Mosley knew that he was holding the gun to Tommy’s temple, and Tommy could only smile about it.

(Or maybe he knew nothing, and he stood there smiling and actually thought he was happy.)

«Despite the political and, how can I say, _social_ differences between your two families,» he was saying, and Tommy wanted to punch him in the face, «a rare manifestation of young love.» It sounded like a speech.

«Thank you,» Tommy said, as the other man finally let go of Lizzie’s hand.

The party continued until late at night. Lizzie was happily drunk and dancing with Polly, who looked just as drunk and especially forgiving, tonight.

The bride and groom were dancing, and laughing, and through the pale light he thought he could see John and Esme, forever ago. The air was sticky again. Thicker.

He wanted to say, don’t - don’t become thicker, not until we’re home; let me drive back in peace, we’ll reschedule. Then it was so sticky he couldn’t move, though not as sticky as that night in the barley field. He’d been able to move then, but not to make out Lizzie’s shape in the mist; he’d thought te scarecrow had started speaking. Then, the scarecrow had spoken in her voice, and he’d understood. Her voice had pierced a hole through the sticky air, somehow. Barely enough for him to slide through.

He’d shot his gun into the air and Grace had left. She must have been angry, now - it hadn’t been kind. And afterwards, for the first time, he’d been angry too. At Grace - at the Grace who came to visit him, at any rate. He’d never been angry at her, not since she’d come back from the States.

So he was dreading her return, now. He’d seen her golden hair earlier, before the ceremony, but not her face. She was close, he could tell.

Then, shattered glass.

«There’s a gentleman asking for you at the door,» a maid was telling Tommy, looking like she was scared of him. Somewhere behind her another maid was cleaning up the remains of a broken champagne glass.

He nodded. As he walked, he ran his finger over the gun he kept in his underarm holster.

It was only Alfie Solomons, in the end, waiting just outside the gate, like he’d once waited just outside the woods, on the edge of the clearing: a generous God that never meddles with his creatures, just merrily watches from above. And he was a God; he’d told him himself.

«I’d like to have one all for myself someday - guess it’s too late since I’m a god now.» He was talking about wives, Tommy figured, hoping he didn’t look too disheveled. He took another cigarette and lit it, knowing he still had some time before the other man got to the point.

«But I’d like to throw a party like this, just because. Return the wife the following morning.»

 _Are you sure about that_ , he wanted to ask, _wouldn’t you want to return her the same day you got her?_

«I thought man was not supposed to ask for more than he’s allowed to have,» Tommy replied, feeling in the other man’s voice that he was waiting for a reply; although he didn’t regret marrying Lizzie, in spite of everything, and he could never have regretted marrying Grace. That was just the way a man was supposed to talk about his wives.

«Truly unfair to speak like that about Mrs Shelby, Tommy,» Solomons pointed out. «You’re lucky I won't tell her.»

Solomons could see how tense Tommy got when he mentioned her. Solomons could see right through him all the time. «She seemed alright, that’s all,» he said. «Does she like Cyril?»

«Well enough. Not a dog person, Lizzie,» Tommy played along.

«Dogs know people,» Solomons informed him. «And you got cute kids, Shelby.»

It was too candid, even for Solomons’s standards, to be a threat.

«Ruby loves Cyril,» he replied, «I’m afraid she’d never allow me to give him back.»

«It’s alright - worked my ass off for my kid to live in a mansion, after all,» he said. «Don’t all parents?»

Tommy took another drag. Solomons patted his trousers and pulled at his too loose braces, like a child who can’t sit still at church.

They fell silent as Tommy smoked. «Why did you come here?» he asked once the cigarette was spent.

«Well, well, this is a beautiful young love that I helped create, didn’t I?» Tommy knew he was evading the question, even for his own standards. «I wanted to see my own work. Handsome couple, they are. Though you’re still the prettiest brother.»

For the first time in a good few years, Tommy blushed; he found himself unable to say something ironic, yet devoid of any real meaning, in return.

«Hush, hush, don’t get too worked up,» Solomons told him - he hadn’t missed it. «Wanted to see how our little thing was progressing.»

Tommy didn’t reply.

«It’s the alcohol, mate,» Solomons stated.

Tommy would have liked to tell him - about Mosley, but also about John, about his arranged wedding to Esme and how Ada had chosen that night to give birth to Freddie’s son - and about Freddie and Karl and Ben Younger, while he was at it. Or about his mother and the narrowboat he’d been born on, or about his mother mother and all the way back to Genesis. So that Solomons could _understand_ , explain everything that was going on, how it had come to be ,and then he’d tell Tommy how it would all turn out; because Solomons was now, apparently, a God. He could have told him all of those things, he guessed, Solomons wouldn’t have questioned it - what did he even have to lose, since Solomons seemed to know everything, anyway.

«Have to go,» he mumbled, then turned on his heels. Solomons nodded, touched his hat in lieu of a goodbye.

Back inside he was greeted by Polly, who looked more upset than Tommy was expecting. «Ada?» he asked, his mind going back to the other wedding, ten years ago.

«Not yet,» his aunt replied, «she’s still got a bit to go.»

Polly looked uncomfortable now, the old hostility back in her stiff limbs. «Mosley offered Lizzie a drink,» she told him. «Poor thing was forced to accept.»

«Where are they?» Tommy asked, his tongue drying like it had been left in the sun.

«Not a clue,» Polly replied.

He ran to the garden, where the old man was entertaining guests.

«Mr Shelby!» the old man shouted as he saw him.

«Have you seen my wife, Sir?» Tommy asked, his voice hoarse, like after a nightmare.

«Mr Mosley said he was taking her to the library,» he replied, «said they’re old acquaintances - I didn’t know Mrs Shelby was from such environments!»

And the guests smiled, and agreed, apparently admiring this Mrs Shelby they were picturing in their minds. The old man, he was laughing too. If he knew of Lizzie’s past, as a Londoner, Tommy didn’t know; or if he genuinely thought Lizzie was a fascist. Or if he was implying that he was being cuckolded as they spoke, which Tommy admittedly did nothing to disprove, running straight to the main house as if the garden was collapsing all around him like a tunnel.

 _Lizzie_ , was all he thought; the Epsom races all over again. The only gun he’d ever misfired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The arranged marriage is done! Tommy’s speech in S5 about his mother who died when he was youngish made the timeline for Finn’s birth… unlikely at best. (the show is really bad at ages imo). I’ve seen other writers fix it by making Finn Arthur Sr’s son that he had with some other woman and I quite like it, especially the way it sets him apart from the rest of his siblings.
> 
> The next chapter is going to be rough. I apologize in advance.


	7. Though your eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He’d never given it so much thought, but it made sense. That he paid her to be able to look at himself in the mirror, and maybe that was love._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here I am! I’ll be done with exams soon, at least until September, and I honestly can’t wait. I love uni but uni doesn't love me back.  
> To everyone who left kudos and comments and bookmarked this - I am so beyond grateful! I’m so glad you’re enjoying my quarantine baby. I have written about 40k words so far and I’m in a much better place mentally than I was when I started writing it. Hope you guys are safe and not too miserable xx
> 
> Content warnings in the end notes; this one is fairly rough.

It was dark inside, and somber; the old man must have wanted to keep the party outside. It was a nice day, early in the spring, and it had turned into a nice night, not too cold and lit by the full moon. There were tents in the garden and plenty of torches, butlers carrying trays full of food meant for rich people and champagne. Tommy had drunk quite a lot. Maybe that was why he’d let down his guard - to go see Solomons, of all people.

Mosley had said the library, although God only knew whether he’d lied - Lizzie was still exploring her newfound passion for reading, influenced by Linda, no doubts, or maybe from the dead older sister he’d never known she had. She wouldn’t have trusted Mosley, but she knew they had to keep up appearances.

She’d followed Mosley for him, in the end, which was yet another well rehearsed script - Ada’s pregnant stomach at a wedding, forever ago, Polly’s fragile trust shattered. Everything had already happened once again, and no one was trying particularly hard to prevent the past from repeating itself. Or maybe Lizzie had done it for him, hoping that this time, just this time, it could be different - this time it wouldn’t end badly. It always did.

As expected, the library was empty, although it still smelled faintly of smoke; there were one cigarette butt and the remains of a cigar in an ashtray that hadn’t been emptied by the servants. Someone had just been there, but now they were gone, leaving the smell of smoke in the air, which was thicker again. Almost sticky. He knew Grace was in the library, hiding behind the bookshelves; but Lizzie needed him. He focused on the smell, craving a cigarette for himself. It was either a maid secretly smoking among the old books, or Mosley had really taken his Lizzie to the library, after all.

Tommy found himself wishing he was a dog. Cyril would have been able to follow the scent, to track down Lizzie just from her smell and that of the cigarette she’d just smoked, as she always did when she was uncomfortable and in public. But Tommy wasn’t a dog, and he smelled smoke all the time since he smelled like smoke himself; he could only run upstairs, two steps at a time, to search the rooms.

Mosley wouldn’t choose a bedroom that was normally in use: his acquaintance with May Carleton had taught him that those houses usually had guest wings. So he guessed that it was a guest wing he was looking for. Funny how Arrow House would have intimidated him once, how far the goalposts had moved; his little brother would soon live in a house with a guest wing, and so could he, if only he wanted to.

Some doors were locked and the entrances blocked by various objects, plants and decor, so he didn’t look inside. Two of the rooms were empty, one was occupied by canvasses covered with cloth, like a rich man’s version of a warehouse. He was still running when he remembered he wasn’t supposed to make noise.

The last door before the end of the corridor was ajar. A faint light shone through the crack, from a candle, perhaps, not too far from the entrance. He could make out a shade in the middle of it, like a figure that was standing still. He moved towards the wall and walked slowly.

What if he’s with her, he thought, trying to come up with a plan but finding only the same old rage. Knowing Mosley knew nothing and wishing he knew it all - so that he could hate him openly, for once. He’d already risked going off plan once, and back then he’d just said mean things to her. What if he was with her now, what if he’d drugged her or worse. Would he smile and laugh and joke about wives and whores, would he take the gun from his holster and finish what he’d started? Would she still look him in the eyes if he didn’t?

The space between wall and door was wide enough for him to see a head of dark hair - Lizzie’s, he realized, recognizing the earrings, the curve of her long neck. A dancer’s neck, the tallest of all the wives everywhere they went, and she did nothing to conceal her height. She was lying face down on the bed now, and her feet were dangling past the edge of the mattress; her skirt had been lifted to expose her legs, and she looked still. Tommy’s hand went to the underarm holster, caressing the metal of the gun.

He could see him now as well, standing by the bed where he must have carried her unconscious form, if he hadn’t knocked her out after luring her there. He was in shirtsleeves and looked disheveled, his usually slicked back hair heavy and oily on his forehead. All of him looked heavy and oily, as heavy as the thick air, shiny in the dim yellow light.

He was fumbling with his belt, Tommy saw. Fumbling to open it, or God forbid to close it, and he-

Before he knew it the door was wide open, his shoulder sore. Heavy doors, the old man had chosen, dark wood and carved and hard against bone.

The gun was in front of his face, tight in both hands, loaded and ready; it wouldn’t misfire. Mosley looked like he’d been caught by the enemy platoon as he was taking a piss, his hands still fumbling with the belt. Lizzie looked dead.

Mosley dropped the belt, then raised his hands, as one does in front of a loaded gun.

And if he hadn’t known earlier, maybe there still was a way out; he already knew Tommy was a jealous husband, after all, and a jealous husband is not necessarily a double agent, a killer. Plausible deniability: just a man laying his claim on the woman he owned.

 _Owned_ , as if he could own her; he could benefit from about every single thing she was able to offer him, but she knew him, and that outweighed all the rest. She knew that the man with the gun and the crazy look in his eyes was not the exception, the great Thomas Shelby in his darkest moments; rather, it was the great Thomas Shelby in all of his glory. Everything else was façade.

Tommy could feel his finger shake on the trigger, as Mosley’s mouth turned into a smile and he slowly lowered his hands back to the belt, to fix it. He did so with a click. Whether he’d only just started to remove it, or if he was trying to put it on again - it was Epsom all over again. You didn’t come, she was saying, from where she lay unconscious, you didn’t come, didn’t come, didn’t come. She was awakening from her slumber and taking the gun in her own hands. She was saying something, he thought he heard…

It was Mosley’s voice, he realized afterwards. He was walking towards him, even though the gun was right between his eyes. He was walking towards him and speaking softly, as one does to a scared horse. Is this what I’ve become, he thought, a scared horse? Would Mosley shoot his gun in the air to scare him away?

«Good boy,» he was saying, «now put it down.»

And Tommy did.

It was embarrassing, now - twice he’d tried to kill the man and twice he’d failed. Only now he’d been seen. Jealous, he thought, I am a jealous husband, being cuckolded at my own brother’s wedding. Mosley was still smiling.

«Let’s pretend this never happened,» he told Tommy finally, when the gun was back in its holster. «I’ve never been in your position, but I guess I’ll understand. Wives,» he stated. «As your people would call it, kin.»

Tommy couldn’t do much but stare. At Lizzie’s outstretched arm, while the other was tucked underneath her, her head lifted just barely from the cushions, to stare at the two men with wide eyes, or perhaps to breathe. She had just awoken. She hadn’t grabbed the gun, earlier, because she’d still been out, which meant that he’d seen her, _seen_ the way he saw Grace: it was the first time.

She was alive, his Lizzie, possibly drugged or God forbid injured, but alive. He wanted to arrange her in a more comfortable position, turn her on her back, run a hand through her hair to comb it, but he knew he had to pretend he was listening to Mosley’s words. He seemed to recall it was all for some higher purpose.

«I guess after the first time this happened, you’ve got reasons to be more protective,» Mosley continued. He meant the show, he realized, Lizzie’s birthday, and the ballet. He knew he and Lizzie hadn’t fucked after the ballet, she’d told him, she wouldn’t have lied - but Mosley had tried, hoping to have both the dancer and Lizzie in his bedroom, which was Tommy’s bedroom, one of the guest ones at Arrow House. _Cuckolded in his own house_.

_The first time this happened._

«So we’ll pretend this never happened. She’s grown choosy, in the past years,» Mosley said.

Tommy knew he needed another moment, to gather the strength and to think. Mosley looked like he wasn’t going anywhere.

Finally, he understood; he moved to the bed as the other man made no attempt to help. Lizzie was taller than him and for some men that was disgraceful: Mosley wanted to see him try. To lift her up from the bed, carry her to safety. Carry her home.

«Nice guest rooms, though a bit empty,» Mosley commented, as Tommy slapped her cheeks to keep her awake.

«We’re going home,» he informed him and her at the same time.

«Surely it won’t be an issue for the old man if you stay,» Mosley tried.

«We’re busy tomorrow morning,» he lied. «Come on, Lizzie.»

He lifted her until she was upright, pulling her skirt down to its full length. And then she groaned and the muscles in her arms tensed. She was carrying some of her own weight. Thank God, Tommy thought. Thank God.

«Come on, good girl,» he whispered against her neck, as she held onto his arms to steady herself. Tommy held her then, like she’d done with him in the barley field, that night - hoping this time it would be enough, or even just a tiny fraction of what she’d done for him. He walked her along the corridor and down the stairs slowly, feeling Mosley’s eyes on his back.

Polly was guarding the main door, perhaps sensing what was happening inside; she could sense things, sometimes. She observed Lizzie carefully, then nodded. «Do you want to take her to the hospital?» she asked at last.

«We’re going home,» Tommy informed him. «Tell Finn I’m happy for him, eh? And tell the old man we had an emergency.» He had the fleeting thought that he was leaving his brother’s wedding without even saying goodbye, which wasn’t very kind. But Lizzie was holding less and less of her own weight now, leaning more heavily against him.

The car was nearby and he helped Lizzie onto it. She sort of crumbled in her seat, and suddenly she looked dead, like she had back on the bed. She was trying to speak.

«Didn’t catch that,» Tommy tried.

«…was him.»

He stopped in his tracks, before inserting the key, unsure whether to feel insulted, or sad, or both, because she’d felt the need to tell him. «I know,» he replied.

Sometimes he thought he had her trust, and then she did things like these - like filing for divorce in London behind his back. He always deserved it, but never expected it.

«Are you hurt?» Tommy asked before igniting, not really expecting an answer. Just weeks ago he’d asked her the same thing - after Alfie Solomon’s surprise visit at the camp, while he’d been riding in the woods. He knew Solomons would never hurt Lizzie, unless he had good reason to, and he would never hurt Lizzie like that, full stop, because of his nature, or his religion, Tommy didn’t know. But it had become this never ending script, like for a play, where he always asked her, are you hurt, knowing full well that she was, for one reason or another.

«What did he give you, Lizzie?» he tried one last time.

She whispered something that he couldn’t make out, though it probably didn’t matter anyway. The wine, Tommy thought, he must have put something in the wine. She’d sleep it off. She’d sleep it off and she’d be fine.

He drove in silence, trying to keep his pace as steady as he could, which wasn’t hard, since it was night and no one was around. He had to slow down sometimes, when he thought he saw small animals running off in the night, rabbits and cats and stray dogs trying to survive, all the way until Arrow House.

The old man’s house, soon to be Finn’s mansion - his very own golden cage - it was on the opposite side of town. He should have driven through the city; but he knew a few more minutes wouldn’t affect Lizzie’s state, and he needed to see the trees. He chose to drive around Birmingham instead, away from the smoke and between dark fields that all looked the same, with mist hovering over the earth like the quiet surface of a lake. Places that looked like where he’d taken her on their first night as husband and wife, trying to show her his roots, close to where the narrowboat had been when he’d been born.

Lizzie came to slowly, muttering something every now and then, but more and more often as Tommy drove. By the time they were close she was mostly coherent, though she couldn’t keep her head up.

Are you hurt, he should have asked her again; but he found he lacked courage, or maybe he was ashamed. He never knew how to behave, when he knew Lizzie was hurting like that.

He parked near the main house, then helped her out of the car. She was leaning heavily against him, because of the drugs, or because she was shocked, Tommy couldn’t tell, but it reminded him of some soldiers, back in France, after a grenade went off or a tunnel collapsed, the rare times they were pulled out of there alive. They had that look in their eyes.

They did not speak of the years of the war, but Tommy knew she’d had to fight to some degree as well; that what Mosley had done, or had been about to do, was different for Lizzie from what it would have been to a woman who hadn’t been in her old trade. It was an entire can of worms Tommy had never meant to open, not only because he’d been an active participant in it. Women’s trouble, they’d never really been his area, he often told himself, to absolve himself, perhaps.

He walked her inside, praying that Edith was done with her nightly patrols; he knew Edith didn’t really trust him, though no more than the other maids. It had been hard to find girls willing to work for the house, given their reputation and that of their heritage; the pay had helped, but only partially. He’d seen the way Edith had looked at Lizzie and the children when they’d come back from the Lees, how he’d brought Lizzie aside.

He guessed maids were used to seeing violent husband in their line of work. Rich and poor, violent men were all alike. Though he often suspected his oldest brother of it, with his temper and his failed marriage, Tommy had never been the kind of man who hit a woman, and he took some amount of pride in that. But he wouldn’t have blamed Edith, if she’d become all riled up, seeing him take Lizzie home like that, leaning against him and struggling to keep her eyes open. Stay with me, he wanted to tell her, but he didn't want to say it out loud, for fear of the staff. It was easier, when they hadn’t had any staff.

Thankfully Edith seemed to be asleep, and with some heavy lifting he managed to drag Lizzie upstairs, feeling ashamed by the painting hanging over the staircase, then asking himself why.

It wasn’t Edith he should have been concerned about; as they were near their bedroom, he heard tiny footsteps on the floor ahead. Moments later Charlie’s head emerged from the darkness, his light brown hair lit by moonlight.

«What’s going on?» Charlie wanted to know.

«Mum is feeling ill,» he replied, catching himself just in time. Hoping Lizzie hadn’t heard, but knowing the little boy had: it was easy to think that children were stupid, but Tommy knew they were far smarter than adults gave them credit for.

«Lizzie felt a bit sick during uncle Finn’s wedding,» he corrected himself, trying to make his voice sound normal. The little boy didn’t sound convinced, but he turned on his heels and walked back towards his room.

Tommy opened the door to their shared bedroom with his free hand, then sat Lizzie on the bed to remove his jacket, loosen his tie.

«Did he go back to bed?» Lizzie asked him suddenly. She heard, Tommy thought.

«Yes,» he replied.

She didn’t look like she was going to move - so he started removing her jewelry, trying to keep his touch as light as he could.

«I’m going to kill him,» he stated - to her, to himself.

«You already tried, didn’t you?»

He didn’t reply.

«That’s what you wanted to do at the rally. That went wrong. Were you trying to commit murder on a stage, Tommy?» she almost sounded like she was mocking him. She must have already figured it out, before tonight - but maybe she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t stupid, his Lizzie.

He saw no point in denying, not anymore. «Murder for hire,» he replied.

«And where’s your hitman now, Tom?» she asked.

«Dead,» he replied. «Same as Aberama Gold.»

She nodded. He’d run out of jewelry to remove now, and he knew, logically, he had to remove her dress next, but he didn’t want to. It was a can of worms he’d never had any intention to open. She wasn’t light, Lizzie, she had burdens to carry that other women didn’t have, which was one of the reasons why he’d been so hesitant about marrying her. Not because people would have whispered, as Polly had thought.

He was part of the burdens, though he liked to think that he’d been kinder than most. He often wondered whether sex was for Lizzie what tunnels, and small, underground places in general were for him: the chosen setting for her nightmares, the place she came back to, because she’d never really left. The eternally soft spot he’d hit when he’d wanted to really hurt her, that night, when he’d told her that in his heart, he still paid her for it.

When he wasn’t twisting the knife, though, he didn’t know how to deal with it, so he didn’t; which was why he didn’t want to touch her, to remove her dress, even though he knew she had to be changed into her night clothes, so that she could sleep Mosley’s poison off.

He climbed onto the bed to gain access to the buttons on her back, but also because he needed the soft surface right underneath him, to keep him afloat. As he worked his way through the buttons, with as much care as he was able to muster - somewhere past the third one - he felt Lizzie’s back jump.

She was shaking now, and it scared him. Not even in her darkest moments had he heard her sob without a hint of anger. Battered and blue from rough johns and near death and covered in blood as she pushed out their daughter, she’d been angry. She’d never looked so vulnerable, not even on the bed, with her legs wide open and bloody and all life almost gone from her body. She’d never allowed herself to.

«Why?» she was asking him. Her back was arched and her posture was that of a scared animal: Tommy sat on the opposite side of the bed. «Why keep me if you don’t want me. Why pay for me in your heart when you could have another woman for free? Why not let me leave?»

_Why do you destroy everything you touch?_

And Tommy knew she was right on all accounts, and on a few more she hadn’t thought to mention, which was justifiable, given her current state; that he was keeping her like a caged bird, and had on more than one occasion cut off her wings just as she had attempted to fly.

That though he treated her coldly, he’d never allowed her to break free; and when he’d given her the papers, already signed, as a Christmas gift, the truly tragic thing was, she’d chosen to stay.

«If I didn’t pay you, Lizzie,» he said at least, not even recognizing his own voice, wondering where the words came from. He sounded remarkably calm and it scared him. «If I didn’t at least try - how am I supposed to be able to carry the weight? How could I live with myself, Lizzie?»

He’d never given it so much thought, but it made sense. That he paid her to be able to look at himself in the mirror, and maybe that was love. She wasn’t different from the other women he’d had, then, if that was all there was: they’d all allowed him to see himself differently through their eyes. Grace for her work as an agent and for her education, because Tommy had always liked his women to be higher up than he was; May for her love of horses, her connections, and because she was as high up as it got; Irina too, for some reason.

Lizzie, because even when he’d had nothing good left to give, at least he had paid her, and knowing that he’d been able to sleep at night.

But - no, that was not all there was. The others, they hadn’t known him so well, or for so long: there was still a case to be made, to convince them that Tommy _was_ that better man. Lizzie, she knew him too well: he couldn’t fool her anymore. If he’d started behaving like the man he wanted to be, the man he wanted her to see, she would have called the doctors. So he had to be Tommy around, and that was uncharted land, both really easy and the most difficult thing.

Even now she was looking through him, sitting on the opposite side of the bed. Her chest fluttered like that of a bird, her hands were shaking and so were his: he wouldn’t have been able to unbutton her dress even if she’d been closer.

«Then don’t,» she said in the end, when he’d already forgotten what he’d said. «Don’t pay me,» she clarified. «Try. Like normal people. You and I.»

Tommy was looking down at some spot on the floor, between the bed and the door.

«Because you don’t know how humiliating feeling paid for it can feel. For me.» And it was as close to an admission as he’d ever heard come from her.

«I’m not asking you to love me,» she said then. «I’m not asking you to treat me as if I were her, because I love myself too much to spend my life trying to be someone I’ll never be.»

She was fare more articulate than Tommy was expecting from someone who’d been drugged and violated like she had. Perhaps it was the drugs, and all the years underneath. Like water against a dam, slowly driving it to its breaking point.

«I’m not asking you to be faithful,» Lizzie said, «though I don’t think you’ve been sleeping around much, lately. I’m not asking you to let me go, because I have nowhere else to be. I might have no right to, but I’m asking you to be kind, and to let me in.»

He didn’t know what to reply to that. «I don’t want you to be anywhere else,» said the spirit that had temporarily taken control of his mouth, still stuck on that thought, on that idea.

That even though he hadn’t loved her back when he’d broken her engagement to John - and he’d done it rather cruelly, with the money, in the car - he’d been possessive, in a way: she’d become his whore, even though she slept with all of Small Heath anyway. He’d become possessive without giving her anything in return, and for it he knew he’d been selfish.

That though he hadn't loved her then, it hadn’t been mere rivalry between gangs when he’d cut Angel Changretta to prevent him from attending his wedding to Grace. He hadn’t loved her, because he’d loved Grace, back then. He’d seen the three of them at Epsom and he’d made his choice, which would almost certainly have been the same even if Grace hadn’t been pregnant with his son.

Whether it was possible to love more than once, he was still finding out - he’d loved Greta, but it had happened before the war, when he’d been someone else.

Whether it was possible to give someone the chance to leave, even if you know it would destroy you, at Christmas he’d discovered it. Whether it was too late or not, he had an inkling, since she hadn’t taken that chance.

«Stay,» she ordered him, like he had done that night, after the barley field, he remembered. It wasn’t like Lizzie, to order him to stay, not so openly. She’d been not so secretly pleased when he’d begun to stay the night, early on, after the war, which was a service she didn’t provide to all johns. It had been painfully clear that she’d loved him then, or maybe, like all johns, he’d just liked to think that he was special.

«I’ll stay, if you stay,» Tommy heard himself saying, suddenly scared that he was not special, that he was still nursing the illusion of every man who’s ever used a whore’s services.

«Of course,» she replied, then all strength seemed to abandon her.

He waited until his hands were steady enough to unbutton the dress, and even then they weren’t completely still; then he slid her into the silk nightgown he’d bought her in London, lifted the covers until she was settled underneath. The drugs put her to sleep soon, and he watched her chest rise and fall slowly, lying on his side, not daring to come closer.

Sleep came much later, when the sun was beginning to rise outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big content warning for sexual assault, drugging, discussion of past rape and traumatic sexual experiences. The whole deal.  
> I am so sorry.
> 
> This ended up being yet another character study, and yet another dissertation on trauma.  
> Lizzie’s experience as a prostitute in the slums in the 1920s must have been intense, and I think Tommy knows it. The question is, will they be able to work through it and communicate?  
> Thank you again for all the love you've shown me and my quarantine child <3


	8. Trouble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Because it was a still open wound, and wounds aren’t meant to be touched until they are healed. He didn’t know the nature of the wound, or how long it would take for it to heal, but he thought he could wait. God knew she’d waited for him._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here I am! Uni is destroying me. For real. I can’t wait to be done with it :(((  
> I think dealing with last chapter’s events will be a challenge for Tommy and Lizzie. Actually, dealing with the last ten years will be a challenge for Tommy and Lizzie. I am a bad person who won't let them find peace...

Trouble came soon. Almost too soon, in Lizzie’s eyes, still early in the spring.

It came in the shape of a phone call late one Thursday evening, on one of those rare days when Tommy came back to Arrow House before midnight. It rang in the study and he jumped up from his torpor like a spring. Thinking he was underground in France, or maybe just waiting for some business, Lizzie didn’t know; she’d been asleep as well.

At any other time they would have been fucking, but he hadn’t touched her since the wedding and she hadn’t asked him to. He hadn’t dared to say anything, in return, and they hadn’t spoken about it the way they had never discussed the night at the barley field - not openly, at least.

Once properly awake, she followed him into the study, barefoot on the cold floors of the mansion, down the shrine turned into staircase and into the large wood paneled room where he’d last tried to hand her money, right before having his whole family arrested.

If he decided to leave Arrow House - and Lizzie doubted he would ever do that, not after spending so much time and money to turn it into a shrine - whatever new place he chose, it would soon become just as cursed. So they might as well keep Arrow House, was her reasoning: no point in trying to escape something that’s part of you.

She tried to get close to him as he spoke on the phone, to comfort him, perhaps, until they were standing with their bare feet close together. She tried to raise an arm, to put it around his waist, small gestures, displays of affection they weren’t really accustomed to. But he was stiff to her touch, and tried to get away, his escape blocked by the desk behind him. He looked scared, even, though she didn’t know whether he as afraid of her or of whoever was on the other end of the phone.

He spoke only a few words into the phone, muttering them under his breath, then Lizzie could make out ‘I’m coming’. And soon enough he was upstairs, changing into yesterday’s clothes, that he’d removed not even an hour ago.

«Where are you going?» she asked him.

«To the police station. It was Moss.»

Lizzie recognized the name of the most loyal cop on the family’s payroll. She’d known him personally as an occasional customer; he was an ugly man, and rough mannered, but good.

«What is it about?» she asked.

Tommy sighed. «Finn’s new wife.»

Lizzie had to dig to remember the small girl, with long dark hair and a boarding school education. She wondered what a girl like her was doing at a police station to begin with.

«Is Finn safe?»

«She was at a rally with the Communists in Birmingham,» he explained. «She was there alone. It was raided.»

Lizzie nodded. «Did Jessie Eden escape?» she asked him as he was leaving the room, unable to keep herself.

She didn’t get a reply.

He drove to the police station in silence and in the dark, allowing himself to have another cigarette. He’d just smoked one, right after stroking his cock in the dark, once he’d made sure that Lizzie was asleep. Thinking of the solid presence beside him, though it made him feel guilty - then, thinking about some of their encounters, after the war, and about that night at the river, their first night as husband and wife. He’d taken her to the place where he was born, and though he hadn’t said anything, he was sure she’d understood. At least some.

Tommy knew that she knew that he got off by himself in the dark, when she was asleep, or at least when he thought she was asleep; but she never brought it up. After the wedding - after the night that had followed the wedding - something had changed, like after the night at the barley field. They were the single battles that changed the ways of a war, though the war itself remained the same: it was about sex now. It had never been about sex before.

When they were both naked, it used to be easier, and he’d always enjoyed making her come. He had no doubts that she enjoyed it as well, from the way she screamed and shook and suffered, and from how long it all lasted. It had surprised him, the first time. It wasn’t customary to make a prostitute finish, he guessed, it was an act that belonged to that other category, together with all the other acts you perform with your wife or with your first love. It was a line he and Lizzie had begun to cross early on.

(John must have crossed it as well, if he was serious about marrying her. Tommy had laughed at him then, and look at him now.)

He wondered briefly about the brother he still had, whether he and the dark haired girl he was going to pick up from the police station performed those acts as well. That was probably a weird thought, and a serious sign of withdrawal: they’d never gone more than a couple of weeks without doing it, in the eleven years they’d known each other, with the exception of when he’d been married to Grace. At any other time, he would have found a woman in the streets, asked a friend for a contact, anything, but he’d made a promise on Lizzie’s birthday and he wanted to try to keep it, for once. And besides, ever since the Mosley affair, even his libido had taken the toll.

But now it had been weeks since the wedding, and he was thinking about his youngest brother having sex, and about Lizzie’s moans when he made her come, which meant that he was still able to crave. He’d already failed him once, when Lizzie and the women had had to take care of his virginity before he and Arthur even bothered. He should have told Finn something, anything, but he still hadn’t. John had had two children by twenty-two years of age, but he couldn’t imagine Finn with a child, or in bed with a woman; if Maggie could even be called one.

He was greeted by Moss after he parked outside the station. It had begun to rain lightly and the officer quickly shepherded him inside. His shift must have been over for a while, but he was waiting for him: such was the power his name held in Birmingham.

It felt good to be reminded.

Inside, Moss lead him to the cell, where Margaret was sitting on the ground. There was only another occupant - a woman Tommy knew from fame, who had been a prostitute many years ago and whom Arthur Sr had visited sometimes. Now she was old and spoke rarely, also because she had no upper teeth left, and only a couple on the bottom; she regularly spent the night at the precinct. Tonight it was raining, he thought, and it was wet inside in spite of the rotting walls.

Margaret was dressed somberly, like a working girl, in a grey dress and boots, her formerly tied up hair on her shoulders and back, possibly from the commotion.

«She’s not very experienced,» Moss told him, «they say she was easy to catch. No one touched her, though, after we discovered the name. She was fed,» he reassured Tommy.

Because it was Margaret Shelby, now, and it would have been even more impressive if she’d kept her maiden name, Tommy had no doubt. She was never going to stay in prison long, little Maggie.

The cell door was opened and she got up and walked inside, brushing the dust off her knees like she was used to it, and God only knew she wasn’t - Tommy walked behind her, feigning protection, thanking Moss with just a small nod of his head.

Outside he gave her his jacket, dropping it on top of her head to keep her hair dry. She thanked him with a nod, than gave him back the garment once she was settled in the passenger seat. He offered her a cigarette, which she took.

Had she been her daughter, or her younger sister… when Ada had gone through her own rebellious phase, he’d been angry. Thinking rationally, Maggie was now kin, as well as the sister-in-law of the cofounder of the British Union of Fascists: this was something neither of them could afford. She had to know about her father’s plan, if only the bare minimum, but she wasn’t even twenty years old and she’d gone to the meeting anyway, which was why he didn’t feel as mad as he should have.

To Jessie Eden’s rally, no less.

Thinking even more strangely, in a way he hadn’t used in such a long time - Maggie was a rich girl who’d willingly walked into the lion’s den: that was another reason why he should have been angrier.

But he couldn’t find it in himself.

They smoked in silence as he drove, and only once they were out of the city did he speak.

«Go to London, if you must,» he told her. «And don’t get arrested.»

Join another cause - join the women’s cause, if you must, chain yourself to a radiator, or a tree. Please do something, he found himself thinking, while you can still believe in it.

She looked puzzled, perhaps expecting to be reprimanded, bowing her head like a little girl who’s just disobeyed her father. «Finn knew some of them,» she explained, even though he hadn’t asked her to. «So I joined them. I suppose I could know someone in London, though, from school.»

It all sounded so reasonable, as if he was talking about business with his brother’s young wife. Young enough, he thought, that she must have been only a child when he’d dug tunnels throughout all of France; younger than Finn, even, closer in age to Tommy’s children than to him.

«Thought you’d be angry,» she admitted at last.

He shrugged.

«Did you ask for me, or did my father offer?»

He wasn't expecting her to mention it so carelessly, without even pretending to be in love with Finn, though Polly had assured Tommy that the couple got along just fine. «He offered,» Tommy said.

«Didn’t tell you why?»

«One would think Shelby Company Limited’s reason enough,» he replied, felling slightly insulted.

«But I am his daughter,» she replied, and he had to admit she was right. «And he hates Fascists.»

 _And I’m officially one_ , Tommy thought.

Neither of them spoke for a while.

«Do you know why he gave me to you? And not to the brothers of some of my classmates?»

He didn’t reply.

«Because my sister’s already married well enough, and the dowry is never cheap.»

He considered stopping, not necessarily to leave the girl there - for another smoke, never mind the rain, to clear his thoughts and breathe.

«But to control me, overall. Because he has failed. He strongly believes he got the better end of this deal,» she explained.

She was smiling now. Tommy noticed a small bruise on her cheek, one he hadn’t seen earlier, at the precinct. It was a warm smile.

«I know you’re not really a Fascist, Mr Shelby,» she said.

«Very good, Maggie. So you know why you’re here?» Tommy replied, half playing along, half fascinated by the young girl. It couldn’t hurt to play along.

«For you to drive me back from the police station, mostly,» she replied. «Nice car.»

«Thanks.»

«I don’t know what you’re doing, operating from the inside or God knows what. Finn doesn’t know either.»

«Enough, Maggie.» He tried to sound threatening, to make her understand that he’d been playing along earlier, but he wasn’t now.

It was easy. She dropped it. «You’ll be sleeping at Arrow House tonight,» he informed her, because the house she shared with his brother was on the other side of the city and he was tired. «Finn won’t die without you for one night. Does he know you were delayed?»

«Told him I’d be sleeping at a friend’s house,» she replied. «I’ll call my driver early in the morning, if I may use your telephone.»

He nodded, before stopping the car near the main house. Edith had a rough awakening, when he asked her to prepare a guest room for the girl. He heard Maggie run herself a bath, then retired to his room trying not to make noise - Lizzie was sleeping. He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear before finally lying down.

He woke up early enough the next morning to see what could only be described as Maggie’s escape from Arrow House. From his window in the study he saw that the driver had come early, as she had said he would - but he hadn't come alone.

There was a blond girl sitting behind him, around Maggie’s age and seemingly from a similar environment, dressed in pink with a large hat. If she had been at the meeting too, she must have escaped. She jumped off the car when she saw Maggie run away from the main house. And as the driver took the bag with Maggie’s dirty clothes from her hands into the trunk, the blonde girl leaned forward and kissed Maggie on the lips - just once, for such a short time that Tommy had to ask himself whether he’d really seen it.

It took Tommy a moment to understand what he’d just seen - he was quite sure that women didn’t greet each other by kissing on the lips. Not in Gypsy customs, not in Birmingham ones, perhaps in all girls boarding schools? Then he wondered about Finn, then chased away the thought.

The phone was ringing in the study. He sighed and then walked back from the window, where the car was departing with Maggie and her friend in it. _Friend_ , he thought, then remembered Ada’s roommate that one time - James?

It was the old man on the phone.

«She’s home,» Tommy told him in lieu of a greeting, not really seeing the point in pretending. That didn’t please the other man as much as he’d hoped.

«I was rather hoping, when I gave her to you…»

«I didn’t know she kept such company,» Tommy pointed out. «I was never informed.»

«You must know my club in London. At six?»

Just like that.

Tommy wondered whether he was going to finally reap what he’d sown; to take something home from his deal, other than a rebellious rich girl.

«Daddy heard?» Lizzie was asking him, walking into the study.

He nodded.

«I wanted to start Ruby on piano lessons. Maybe it will help her,» she said, sounding more like she was talking to herself than to him.

Tommy knew that Lizzie liked to keep busy when something was bothering her, liked to direct her efforts towards whatever issue in her life she could manage; and Lizzie was worried about Ruby now. He wondered whether the old man was worried about Margaret as well, and if it felt similar.

Ruby would one day become a rich girl with dark hair, just like Maggie: perhaps she’d inherit her mother’s height, or maybe she’d be smaller, more like him, but he knew she’d become a rebellious rich girl, someday. Even if she played with her dolls all wrong.

«Our guest left,» Tommy told his wife, because their guest had reminded him of their Ruby.

«Not very talkative,» Lizzie stated. «I think she’s close to Gina.»

Tommy just sighed at that.

«I think she means well,» Lizzie continued, «but is horribly misguided. I can give her a hand, if you want.»

Tommy shook his head, but found himself smiling.

«What’s so funny?» Lizzie wanted to know. He shook his head again. Polly had taught him early on - women had some kind of trickery in them, that they never learned, they seemed to be born with it. The information men had to work so hard to acquire, they stumbled upon it without even trying. All-powerful and all-knowing; he didn’t doubt Lizzie alone knew enough to destroy the lives of a dozen Small Heath men. She even had reasons to, but she never did.

«Her father wants to speak to me,» he told her. «In London.»

Lizzie nodded. Afterwards they fell silent. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence - they’d known each other long enough that being in the same room without talking didn’t feel uncomfortable anymore. It was a companionable silence, but one he knew they would have filled, at any other time, with intimacy. He would have taken her hand, and lead her to their room, where he would have undressed her and started making love to her.

He felt he couldn’t do it now, the way he hadn’t the first weeks after Ruby’s birth, or years ago, already, when he’d seen her with an impressive collection of bruises on her neck from a john who apparently enjoyed that. Because it was a still open wound, and wounds aren’t meant to be touched until they are healed. He didn’t know the nature of the wound, or how long it would take for it to heal, but he thought he could wait. God knew she’d waited for him.

And so that afternoon he diligently drove all the way to London. He liked driving, so he didn’t mind it, though it was rather long for a commute. He knew the old man’s club because it was a fairly well known place, and an obvious choice for someone of his standing and wealth. He had to say the old man’s name to get in, though he was fairly sure the concierge knew who Thomas Shelby was. That was probably the reason why he had to say the man’s name in the first place.

He’d once thought that his Romani roots would be an issue, if he planned to become the cofounder of Mosley’s party; but then he’d learned that such things don’t always have to make sense.

The man showed up ten minutes after six. He looked unapologetic about it, and didn’t disclose the reasons behind this delay. This immediately hit Tommy as wrong, and odd, because the old man had always been friendly with him - perhaps more than made sense, at times.

He was angry about his daughter, he figured: he hoped it wasn’t about their agreement. He would have been angry about his daughter, too, had he been the old man. Had Ruby been a rebellious rich girl.

«I’m afraid I wasn’t clear enough,» the old man said, then sighed. He wasn’t hostile, just resigned, but that was hostile as well - as if Tommy wasn’t smart enough to figure this out on his own; as if he needed to be guided through the deal.

«I didn’t realize you wanted me to control his daughter,» Tommy retorted, perhaps too bluntly, but it was done.

The old man grimaced.

«Maggie had… some problems, back in boarding school, and I was rather hoping to straighten her out,» he explained, as if Tommy suspected nothing about it.

Tommy remembered all too well the scene he’d witnessed from the window of his own study, but the old man couldn’t know that. «By sending her to me?» he replied instead, eyes wide.

«You were recommended to me,» the old man replied through gritted teeth.

It made a lot more sense now, that the old man was being so unkind; it hadn’t made sense back then, when he’d acted like he and Tommy were the closest of friends. As for who had recommended the Shelbies, Tommy believed he knew. He didn’t ask the old man about him.

«I got her back,» he explained calmly, «and no one even went as far as touching her. She was, overall, really lucky. I’ve seen workers beaten for less.»

He let it sink, hoping he’d struck a chord by mentioning the workers. He’d always had the impression that the old man behaved out of some kind of desire to atone for his capital sin of being born a rich old man.

«It’s been a while,» Tommy said, a few seconds later, «I believe I didn’t take in your daughter for free.»

It came out too aggressive, once again - once upon a time he’d been better at dosing it, to avoid scaring them right off. Maggie, he should have said, because she was kin, now.

One man looked amused at their serious talk inside the club. Club were places that normal people - rich people - frequented in their free time, to relax and have a good time; but Tommy was so used to them as a place for business, that he always had to remind himself that there were so many men for whom something like that was unthinkable. An entire subset of humanity who didn’t think in deals and subterfuge.

But then again, he thought he was wrong. Every single man in that room - every single one of them - maybe they wouldn’t have become involved in an elaborate plot to murder a political opponent, they wouldn’t have dared; but every single one of them would have sold their own Maggie. To straighten her out. All of them.

«I suppose it’s just fair,» the old man agreed, though he didn’t look pleased. «It’s your right to know.»

«You asked around?» Tommy asked.

«I did. And I received absolutely no information whatsoever.»

He inhaled deeply, trying to summon his remaining calm.

«And that’s good, because Mosley doesn’t suspect anything as of now. You don’t want Mosley to suspect anything about you,» the old man explained as if he was talking to a small child.

«So? It wasn’t parliament? Married off my own brother, to hear that it wasn’t an MP?»

The old man sighed. «Not Parliament,» he said. «I believe it was the man himself.»

And Tommy had thought about it already, though he and Churchill - they went way back. Tommy believed he was capable of being reasonable, and realistic, about his own level of fame, about his possibilities and resources, without overestimating himself but without minimizing them, either. But thinking that he and Churchill himself went way back, that always filled him with dread mixed with pride.

And besides it was good, to think that Churchill himself had done it, it made Tommy feel better about himself than many other possible answers. He’d told him about the plan, but that had been the honorable thing to do; he’d played by the rules and the other man hadn’t and in spite of everything that did him honor.

«You seem surprised,» the old man said.

«I’m not,» Tommy replied.

«Our mutual friend thinks Churchill was aware of your plans,» the old man said, finally acknowledging the existence of their common friend.

«I told him myself,» Tommy admitted. It probably sounded bad, because a man is not supposed to flaunt his connections, especially when they’re so high up.

«Impressive,» the old man said. «And he said nothing?»

«Clearly not,» Tommy replied.

«Then why did he change his mind?»

And Tommy found himself unable to answer.

Immediately after that, the old man seemed to be in a hurry. He was horribly sorry that he couldn’t stay longer, and even if he asked whether Tommy had a place to stay in London for the night, he could tell his heart wasn’t really in it.

He reassured the old man and took his leave, waiting a few seconds until the man had disappeared from the door and into his parked car. He saw him shout something to the chauffeur, and then he was gone.

It was too early to go back to Warwickshire - he preferred to drive at night, and he preferred to go home to find Lizzie already asleep, which was why he’d been especially busy, these last few weeks. Besides, he should have been processing what the old man had said, and he knew he should have been more upset.

He guessed if he just walked around for a few hours, it would become too late to go back to Warwickshire, so he’d go to the hotel and call Arrow House, to tell Lizzie he would be staying in London. And then he would do exactly that.

Had it been a few years ago, he would have asked Lizzie to call a girl for him. Lizzie was good at vetting them, she knew his tastes and she knew when they were too terrified to be any good. She was never jealous of the girls she chose for him. But he knew he couldn’t ask something like that from his wife, and he believed he would have been ashamed of it.

There were always new girls, ones he hadn’t tried before, and it had been a while, so his choice would have been ample. He knew his body wanted it, that his own hands were not enough. Since reaching sexual maturity, he’d gone on without it for so long only during the war, and after Grace’s death, at first, but both times it had hurt too much for his body to still want it. Grief did strange things to his body. But now he wanted it, he was aching for it, and -

And he’d made a promise, on Lizzie’s birthday. He’d sleep alone at the hotel, and he'd drive back in the morning.

He parked in front of it absentmindedly, asked the concierge for the phone. Lizzie was at some reading club dinner he’d forgotten about, so Edith replied, and he told her not to wait for him.

He walked to his room feeling heavy as lead, trying to remember whether he had enough gasoline left to get to Margate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me? Writing something without lesbians in it? Less likely than you think!  
> I want them to address things for once - I fully understand that there’s not enough time in shows to explore these dynamics but I want to see them focus on trauma.  
> Next chapter should come July 19th - and I should be done with exams by then!


	9. An ache you can’t ignore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _«Tommy,» Ada interrupted him. She turned around, supporting her torso on one elbow, lying on her side like a statue, like a goddess. «Did you come here to ask me why you married Lizzie?»_
> 
> _He inhaled, then began staring somewhere between the armrest and Ada’s elbow, because it was easier than her eyes._
> 
> _«Because I can't tell you that.»_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the delay! Life got in the way, in a good way thankfully. My life is very different now from when I started writing this story, and much better, thank god. Updates might become a little slower though I’m still working on this baby and it’s becoming the longest thing I’ve ever written… I’m satisfied with it, overall, and thankful for the love it’s received.
> 
> This is the longest chapter so far, and it’s basically all Alfie and Ada. They are two fucking great characters.
> 
> cw for homophobia - Tommy's trying, we have to give him that. Also mentions of sexual assault. They're dealing with things... and this is Peaky Blinders so they're doing it their way.

He’d been surprised when he’d first seen Solomons’s house.

He’d known that the man had to have a house somewhere, that he didn’t live inside his bakery, didn’t sleep on the floor between the desk and the tools. He’d never seen his London house, but he assumed it couldn’t be much different from the one he had in Margate. This one was humble and filled by those knickknacks old women seemed to collect and by books, but not arranged in neat rows in the libraries like at Arrow House: books that looked like someone actually read them, scattered around like in a French poet’s room a century ago.

The morning was terse and Tommy familiar with the route now. He felt that his visit was more than justified: Solomons had hunted him down in the woods, by the river, before Christmas, to tell him about this deal; Solomons had come, uninvited, to his brother’s wedding, so he, Tommy, had absolutely every right to knock at the man’s door, just as uninvited as he’d been every time, at ten o’clock in the morning on a Saturday.

«Who disturbs my rest?» Solomons screamed him. It could have been anyone, for all the man knew - even someone who’d been sent to kill him; and God knew enough people had reasons to try.

«Tommy Shelby,» Tommy screamed, keeping the smoke in his mouth before exhaling it all in a cloud in front of Solomons’s door.

«Can’t work today,» the man told him, «doctor’s orders,» as he opened the door. He was leaning heavily on his cane and looked out of breath. Tommy knew it wasn’t really doctor’s orders - he was fairly sure that Solomons had never listened to a doctor in his life. It was Saturday, and it was a day of rest. Not that it had ever stopped the man from doing his business, before his unlikely retirement.

«Not going to ask that of you,» Tommy replied. «I have updates on the girl.»

The other man tensed at his words. Not noticeably - Solomons wasn’t the kind of man to let it show.

Maybe God had made sure that he’d never have a wife and kids because it was impossible to imagine him upset; it was impossible to imagine him shaken because someone had taken his Charlie when he wasn’t looking. Which was why Tommy was sure that he’d never had a man in his life, either.

Men, yes, or boys, when he’d been younger, maybe during the war, but not one man. It made Tommy uncomfortable, because he’d never really thought about two men like that, and he’d always been taught that it was disgraceful, for those who did; but he’d also learned that all men had needs, and Solomons had had to satisfy them somehow. He just couldn’t imagine him coming home to anyone, woman or man.

But this time, Solomons had tensed. He showed him inside without pleasantries, showed him an armchair in the living room. The place was as untidy as Tommy recalled - he knew Solomons didn’t like to keep staff, save for an old woman who came to clean weekly.

«You didn’t hear?» Tommy asked, trying to sound incredulous. He wanted to see the other man worry, hold the end of his cane more tightly in his scarily large hands.

«I heard nothing. I assume she’s doing fine,» Solomons replied, none of his usual playfulness in his voice.

«She was arrested,» Tommy said, «two nights ago.»

Solomons immediately relaxed. «Typical Maggie,» he stated, and then, «you were making me worried, mate, you were…»

«She was at a Communist meeting with some of my workers in Birmingham,» he explained.

Solomons looked amused. «Wasn’t expecting anything less,» he said.

Tommy sighed. «I’m saying that nobody warned me, Solomons,» he tried.

The other man scoffed. «Warned you of what? That she’s a bit rebellious, Maggie? After that sister of yours? If anything, I thought you’d enjoyed it,» he objected.

Tommy sighed again. «You know my position,» he tried.

«Worst case, that’ll be more publicity for you. No such thing as bad press, Tommy. The young, Tom, they do what they want. And to think that _we_ once _were_ the young.»

«They sent us to war,» Tommy reminded him, knowing Solomons had served.

«So that hopefully, maybe _they_ won’t have to,» he replied.

He was sitting down on his sofa, the fabric covering lacerated in a few spots. He was playing with his cane, and looked thoughtful.

«Watched her grow, Maggie,» he began. Tommy could feel it in his voice - that he was going to speak for a very long time, unless interrupted, or in spite of it. «Since she was the size of a kitten, when the old man impregnated his mistress. He fell in love with her immediately. And mate, so did I - she was cute as a button.»

He looked like a proud father, Tommy thought, hands joined on the top of his cane. «Never thought I’d have children,» the other man continued, almost as if he knew what Tommy was thinking, «and definitely not gentile ones, but she has become my rebellious gentile child, she has. Convenient, that she was a gentile - couldn’t have married your little brother, otherwise.»

He was babbling again, and through the babbling a thought struck Tommy.

«You were friends with the old man?» he asked, interrupting the other man’s speech, finding himself stuck processing the information. He’d managed to surprise him: he hadn’t expected Solomons to know the old man so well, let alone Margaret.

«Old friends,» said Solomons, with an emphasis on the first word that Tommy couldn’t quite decipher, but he could imagine. «Watched her grow, Maggie.»

That, Tommy had understood.

He didn’t waste time with pleasantries. He stopped by the door before leaving, turned around, tried to think of a way to make his visit sound justified.

«I know the woman who runs those meeting,» he told Solomons, «I can talk to her.»

«If you want,» the other man replied, sounding like he couldn’t care less. «I realize you don’t want her among your own workers.»

«In London, if she has to,» Tommy stated, trying to make it sound final.

He walked the short way to his car and tried to understand what he really thought of the situation. Overall, the man’s confession gave him more questions than answers.

Maybe it was fair play: if the girl was so dear to him, then he was showing him his soft underbelly, in a way. Maybe he remembered how Tommy had reacted when they’d taken Charlie, and he wanted him to know that he, too, could do something similar to him, if he wanted: he was offering him leverage, or the closest thing to it that he as a lonely man with no living family left could provide. Because Maggie was in Tommy’s hands, and they both knew it.

Then he remembered the scene he’d witnessed, unseen, from the window of his study, when Maggie had left Arrow House and the girl on the car had kissed her on the lips.

Arthur often spiced his opinion that people _like that_ were contagious, or that they had one purpose in life, other than fucking their fellow homosexuals, and that was proselytizing: but it seemed frankly absurd that Solomons would willingly turn the girl into a homosexual, if she really was so dear to him. Why would he choose to make her live through some of the same hardships he’d had to live through? Because Tommy was reasonably sure that it couldn’t be an easy life. Besides, how would he even go about it? Talk her into it, with his incessant babbling?

No, it wasn’t that; but that must have drawn them even closer together, in a sort of solidarity.

At any rate, it was still early; so, as he usually did when he felt like he had more questions than answers in his head, he told himself that there was one last person left to visit in London.

She was pregnant, and alone; Karl had been dropped off to boarding school weeks earlier, after Christmas, and Ben Younger was, well, dead. She was pregnant and alone, and Tommy knew she was wiser than they could ever be: it was the wisdom that came with womanhood, the wisdom that came from breaking the chains binding her to Birmingham and moving to London. Great big London, with its myriad of people, among whom the homosexuals, and the Jews and everything else the world had to offer: and maybe Ada could help him navigate that apparently endless sea, Ada who had once lived with James, back when she'd still needed to share expenses with someone else.

Tommy had fought alongside soldiers who were like James, or like Solomons, he had no doubts; those who didn’t care for the women, and nobody doubted that they enjoyed each other company behind closed doors, the few times they could actually find closed doors in the trenches.

They were lucky, thinking about it now, because it was hard to find women in the tunnels, though he’d heard a man joke that maybe, just maybe, if they dug deep enough… they’d find beautiful women and fresh food and clean clothes, and that feeling - cleanliness - they’d long since forgotten. And men like Solomons dreamed of finding the promised land among the rubble just like everybody else, minus the beautiful women, perhaps. Just like everybody else they’d never found it.

Ada’s maid answered the door, after he parked the car. He figured she couldn’t be very mobile; she was due at any moment now. He was going to become an uncle yet again. John had given him seven, while Arthur, thankfully, only one. Maybe one day Finn would give him more, but he felt done already. His brother wasn’t even twenty-two and he was done being an uncle.

The maid lead him to the sofa where Ada was resting. She was swollen, like she’d been the first time, with Karl, but even he had to acknowledge that she wasn’t as young as she’d been back then; or maybe she was used to finer things now, and it had made her weaker - she’d shared a room big enough for one bed with Freddie Thorne throughout her first pregnancy, and look at her now. Maybe wealth had made her softer, or maybe it was just age. She looked like she was struggling. He wanted to hold her hand, so that she’d have to hold back his.

«Nothing to see here,» she told him. She sounded in good spirits, after all, which was probably good since Ben Younger had died. They hadn’t been married, they hadn’t even told each other they were lovers, but they had quite obviously made love, and they had liked each other well enough. That probably left Ada in a strange place, as far as mourning was concerned.

Every time Tommy had had to mourn, he’d always found himself in a position that more than justified it. He wanted to tell her that it was fine to mourn him, that he had mourned Younger too without even being pregnant with his child; that he’d mourned the child that had died together with him even though he’d never seen him before.

«You’re just as beautiful as always,» he told her instead, though the bags underneath her eyes were dark.

«Obviously,» she replied, «though I’d assume my beauty isn’t the most important thing, since I am creating a human being…»

He smiled, appreciating it, but didn’t find it in himself to reply. She looked tired, as well.

«How is our Elizabeth?» he asked.

«She’ll be really good at riding,» she said, caressing her stomach, «she already knows how to kick.»

Tommy found pregnant stomachs upsetting. He hadn’t been there during Lizzie’s pregnancy, and the beginning of Grace’s had been complicated by her husband’s death and all the papers that had followed; but he’d truly tried to be close to her while she carried Charlie. He believed that he’d behaved like a good husband throughout it all, he’d massaged her feet and carried heavy things for her, but when she’d been close to delivering her stomach had always made him uncomfortable. It looked like it hurt, like even normal, everyday tasks were too dangerous.

Then he’d sat just outside the door as Grace gave birth, hearing her screams, feeling scared, though he’d remembered the way his own mother had sounded when she’d delivered John and Ada - and Grace had been blessed with an easy delivery.

(He could still feel Lizzie’s body between his legs, sweaty and shaking and lifeless in the end, like that of a mannequin. He could still see the doctor’s face - the best doctor money could buy - looking at him with that look in his eyes, the look doctors are trained for. He though pregnancy was extremely dangerous for something that’s usually taken so much for granted.)

«Pol is moving in soon,» Ada informed him, «she wants to be there when the time comes.»

«Any day now?» Tommy asked his sister, gesturing to her stomach. Feeling the fear in his throat and pushing it down. He hadn’t been so anxious when she’d been about to deliver Karl - had time made him softer, too? Or had he lost too much already - couldn’t afford to lose his only sister as well?

«Any day,» she confirmed. He hoped it would be an easy delivery; easier than Karl, who had come out upside down, easier than Ruby, who had almost died, dragging her mother into the darkness with her.

«Doubt you came to ask me about the baby,» Ada pointed out.

«What if I did?» Tommy asked. He was sitting down on an armchair by the sofa, signaling that he was going to stay at least for a while. She didn’t offer him anything, because she understood that he wanted no staff around.

«It’s fine if you didn’t,» she said.

He relaxed - he’d been tense without even realizing it. «There’s some trouble with Finn’s wife,» he said, then decided he was sick and tired of talking about Maggie, that he’d already said and heard more than enough about a girl he barely knew.

«You got a little me, didn’t you?» Ada’s smile betrayed the fact that she’d developed a soft spot for the new girl, which was something Tommy had caught on pretty early on.

«…but I want to talk about Lizzie, if you don’t mind,» he said.

Ada looked surprised. «Sure,» she replied. «I… wasn’t sure if I was expecting it or not,» she admitted.

«Why?» Tommy asked, genuinely curious.

«You never talk about her,» Ada explained. «She just is.»

 _She just is_ , Tommy thought. Found it oddly fitting.

«Sometimes…» Ada began, once it was clear that he wasn’t going to say anything. That was why he’d come - to listen to her as she did the talking. Sometimes he didn’t even know what he thought about something until Ada spoke about it first.

She'd stopped in her tracks now. Tommy thought he could take it, whatever she was going to say, because Ada could afford to say things to him that no one else could. To keep her talking, he lifted his eyes - he’d been staring at the floor for a while without even realizing it.

«Sometimes?»

Ada swallowed, then continued.

«Sometimes I wonder why you actually married her. Out of all of them, she knows you best. She’s been there the longest. She’s not a rich girl, like the rest…»

Tommy would have been upset, had anyone else pointed that out.

«So maybe you loved her, or maybe you wanted to do the right thing when you found out about… Ruby,» Ada tried.

Her voice had become merely a whisper. He nodded.

«When she first told me about Ruby I didn’t want to marry her,» he explained, once he was sure she wasn’t going to add any more insult to the injury.

«Pol was pushing for it. I thought you’d surrendered,» she justified.

«No, he said. «I wanted to, when I asked her.» He felt stupid, like a girl in boarding school, asking her classmates about ways to seduce the cute boy who cleaned the stables. Not like a widower who was about to turn forty and was afraid of jeopardizing his second marriage.

«It was after that holiday,» Ada recalled.

Tommy nodded, then no one mentioned the holiday anymore; because it hurt too much, or because Tommy didn’t know what to say. When it came to matters of the heart, he didn’t know enough words.

The barley seeds had been sown during that strange holiday, perhaps. Then he’d come back, he’d decided to run for MP and he’d bought the ring, in that order. It had felt like spring, like being born again. Most people thought the two things - the elections and the ring - were related, and maybe they were; but he knew, had always known, that he could have found any other wife in Birmingham, one who had never been, at one point, one of the city’s cheapest whores. There had been May Carleton, there had been countless others. He could have had them all. He hadn’t wanted to.

«Sure, a wife helped, to be elected,» he said. «Sure, Pol always liked Lizzie, at least since she began working for the company. But it wasn’t that.»

He knew that anyone who didn’t know him wouldn’t have been too convinced by his words, but Ada knew he had no reason to lie.

«She was pregnant,» he pointed out. «You never came to see her, while she was. I thought you…»

«And I’m sorry about that,» he said; that, too, still hurt. «I’ve been selfish.»

«You should tell her,» Ada told him.

«Maybe one day.»

He took a cigarette, lit it. Ada was looking at him with something resembling pity in her eyes.

«I don’t know what would have happened if it hadn’t been for Ruby,» he tried again. «But I think I would have… anyway,» he tried. «It was the sensible thing, at the time. She knows me like no one else. Without Lizzie, I’d be dead,» he said, and Ada nodded, but he knew she couldn’t truly understand.

«Tommy,» Ada interrupted him. She turned around, supporting her torso on one elbow, lying on her side like a statue, like a goddess. «Did you come here to ask me why you married Lizzie?»

He inhaled, then began staring somewhere between the armrest and Ada’s elbow, because it was easier than her eyes.

«Because I can't tell you that.»

«When she gave birth, she almost died,» he revealed, which was something that only Pol knew, probably, because of the way it had all gone down. He thought that maybe it wasn’t the best thing one could say to a pregnant woman, but he felt like he had to say it. «And if she’d died, I wouldn’t have been able to take it, Ada. I would have lost it. I was riding so high… forget the holiday. I wouldn’t have survived.»

He seemed to be unable to finish a sentence. He wasn’t like that, when he spoke about business, and thank God he wasn’t - wouldn’t have made it far, wouldn’t he.

His sister nodded, pure sympathy in her eyes, maybe touched by the revelation, though Tommy was sure she had had to at least suspect it. At any other time he would have found his own words too dramatic, but it felt fitting, now; because he absolutely could not imagine a life without Lizzie’s tall frame keeping him upright, like those young trees supported by wooden structures, even though he was no longer young, even though he still fell to his side, sometimes.

«You have both been through a lot,» Ada told him, which would have once again offended him at any other time.

«Then why is it only hitting me now?» he asked her, genuinely wishing to know.

«Only you can know that,» she replied. She didn’t know about the barley field; but she wasn’t stupid. She knew something had happened, that he hadn’t come to her house on a Saturday night to talk about his wife because absolutely nothing had happened between them.

«But I noticed she disappeared, during the wedding,» she tried, venturing into the open water - knowing he’d never get too angry at her, but also that the smallest mistake could make him curl on himself, closed shut like a clam. Tommy knew it, and he appreciated it. He really did. He just couldn’t help himself when that happened.

«With… with Mosley. And that you disappeared too. Did you catch them…?»

«No,» he said coldly.

«Okay,» Ada replied, «that would have been unexpected. I know Lizzie didn’t like him - he’d been her customer, long ago.»

She was testing the ground, carefully.

«Mosley wanted to,» Tommy said at last. «And he tried. Maybe he succeeded.»

And it felt heavy, in the air between him and his sister - that he was acknowledging it out loud. He didn’t know whether Mosley was fixing his pants because he’d heard his footsteps in the hallway, or because he was done with her. Maybe not even Lizzie knew, since she’d been drugged, maybe they would never know. Somehow this scared him the most.

«While Lizzie…?» Ada’s mouth was ajar, and only after a while did she remember to cover it with her hand, the other arm supporting her frame on the sofa.

He nodded. «Slipped something in her wine,» he said. «I wasn’t careful enough.»

Ada looked horrified. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to tell her such gruesome things, while she was so heavily pregnant; pregnant women were supposed to be more sensitive, or maybe strong emotions were too dangerous for them, they could cause miscarriages, they could cause the babies to come out all wrong. But Ada always disliked it when people treated her like she was any less than a man - so Tommy knew he had to get it all out, with no shame.

«And how is she…?»

«I don’t know, Ada,» he whispered. «I don’t know how to behave around her. I don’t know what to do.»

That was the entire issue, perhaps; but then again everything felt like the entire issue, nowadays.

«Treat her as you normally would,» his sister replied with newfound vigor - ignoring his last sentence, sounding like she knew the answer, and Tommy ached to know _how_ she just knew them, how she knew all the answers, «but kind. It is probably a very difficult thing for her to talk about, and she might not enjoy being treated like she’s made of glass because it happened to her.»

He was wondering how on earth anyone could expect him - how on earth _Ada_ could expect him - to be anything resembling _kind_ ; then he was not listening anymore. He was staring at the cigarette, long spent.

«It was not your fault, Tom,» she whispered.

He shook his head. Maybe he’d come just to hear her say those exact words - because he’d known she’d say them, because it was obvious.

«I think you’ve been too harsh to Lizzie in the past and you know it,» she said, as if that compensated her previous kindness, made it easier to swallow, for Tommy’s pride. But Tommy knew that when Ada was like that - there was only one thing she wasn’t capable of, and that was pity.

«I feel guilty,» he said, then laughed.

«Yes, I think you do.»

He ran a hand over his face, feeling the stubble which was beginning to grow.

«I have caused her too much pain, Ada,» he said carefully. There was another thing he hadn’t told Ada - or anyone. «She wanted to leave last November, and she almost did.»

«I figured,» his sister began, carefully, «that she and Linda were up to something like that. Didn’t tell you, because I thought it was none of my business. But I suspected that.»

«Got the papers in London and everything with Linda,» Tommy confirmed, feeling too tired to think about what Ada had just said, too cornered to become angry at his own sister, «but she chose to stay, my Lizzie.»

He laughed. He tried to say it as matter of factly as he could. Tea is ready; it’s half past three; Lizzie tried to divorce me in November.

«And how did that make you feel?» Ada asked him. «When she almost left.»

Tommy had felt like the earth had given in underneath his feet - but he didn’t know the words to say it, so he said nothing.

«I filed the papers myself, last Christmas,» he told her. «I didn’t want to. But I offered them to her. Wanted to give her a choice.»

Ada looked shocked, like she hadn’t been expecting this one in the slightest, unlike all the previous revelations - not even Mosley’s actions had surprised her that much; and Tommy wondered what his sister really thought of him, if he thought him better or worse than Mosley.

«That was good,» she said in the end. «And she… chose to stay.»

He nodded.

«I think you care more than you want to admit,» Ada said, «about her, and you have for quite some time.»

He closed his eyes.

«And she knows you too well, so you can’t play your usual games. And it scares you. I think you’re scared.»

«Of losing her,» he tried.

«Of having her, too. You’ve taken her for granted for so long.»

That, he had.

Suddenly he found he had nothing more to say, so he took his leave. It was getting late, anyway, and he didn’t want to spend another night away from Warwickshire. It was good to be seen, in the house, every now and then, even just to remind them of who was in charge - to remind them that he could see them and what they were up to and they couldn’t even afford to think about overthrowing the rightful owner.

Who was supposed to try to overthrow him, he didn’t even know - maybe Lizzie. That would have been an interesting turn of events.

It had been easier, he thought, back when Lizzie had had no feelings. She’d had them, of course, but he’d been able to ignore them, when they didn’t suit him; when she’d told him that she wished he wouldn't pay her anymore, like normal couples, normal people - like they weren’t Tommy and Lizzie…

He hadn’t been able to give her that - but he’d been able to give her a job and back then that had been enough.

The thing with Lizzie was, no one had ever taken the time to really get to know her; maybe John had, or maybe he’d been blinded by his own idea of her, but nobody generally paid much attention to their favorite whore. This also set Tommy Shelby apart from most men.

Lizzie always had a soul he couldn’t place, interesting ideas without a clear direction, Lizzie had always had potential and not a clue about how to make use of it. And once he hadn’t minded - to see her make such questionable choices; to see her lost in an endless sea. And now he couldn’t stomach the idea of a man’s hand on her unconscious frame, of Mosley’s sex violating her not so differently from the way certain johns had done in the past, no doubt - but why did it make him feel sick now?

He wondered why it had taken him so long to care, and if it would take just as long, or even longer, to stop caring; whether he’d care so much forever. It was not something he could ignore, it was like an open wound that radiates, a broken bone that you can’t magically heal; a law of nature that simply is, an ache you can’t ignore in a body part you never knew you had.

Though he’d once known he’d had it, and he’d thought it had been severed for good with Greta, and then with Grace. He’d thought he was too old and grey for it to grow back, but maybe he really was like a cat, with his nine lives - there had been nothing past the barley field, like there had been nothing past the tunnels once; in the trenches they’d never allowed themselves to think past the war. During his strange holiday, he’d never allowed himself to think past the current day. And he’d wished for nothing more, in the trenches, than for something to look forward to; yet now it made his skin crawl.  
And yet unexpectedly, by the grace of some God - every time he’d survived. Maybe there was one more miracle left for him; maybe there was something past the barley field.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How long do pregnancies even last on tv? I feel like Ada’s has been going on forever, or maybe not. Call it artistic license… also geography might be a little iffy, I’m far from British and I think distances were perceived different back then, as well - Tommy might have a fancy car but the standards were quite different. Soooo yes.  
> I love Ada and didn’t want to leave her out of this fic. She and Tommy are great when they have scenes together and I wanted to make one of those scenes.  
> So Tommy tries to talk it though and be a big boy. Will he succeed? Or will there be setbacks?  
> Stay tuned xx


	10. White thighs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It was easier to make love with a vessel; and it was a vessel he was after tonight. And it couldn’t work, if Jessie Eden was hurt, because he couldn’t ignore it. It was easier to make love with a vessel, but sometime along the journey he’d realized that even the most miserable man on earth hid his pain as well, and that had been his downfall.  
>  […] somewhere Tommy is still holding Lizzie by the wrists, as she screams, and cries, and asks him questions he’ll never be able to answer, as he makes promises he’ll never be able to keep. There’s a dead army man beside them and he’s not the first and he won’t be the last; outside horses are racing and his other women don’t suspect a thing.  
> _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ten chapters! Life has been crazy in the meantime, but I am mostly ok. Coming back to this story every few days or so is therapeutic.  
> So sorry for this chapter as well, I swear I’m nearly done inflicting pain. Cw for cheating :(  
> I have nothing against Jessie Eden and I think she’s really cool. I absolutely don't want to bash her just because this is a Lizzie/Tommy fic!!! she needs to be happy and for that to happen she needs to be as far from Tommy as she can because he’s like a black hole for other people’s livelihoods.

He stopped at a phone booth on the way back, close to London.

He’d told Alfie Solomons that he knew the woman who held the meetings; that much was true. He dialed the number of the pub on the opposite side of the street from the woman’s lodgings and waited for someone to pick up. He remembered now, like he’d always known it, though he knew he’d previously forgotten it, that Lizzie had a dinner with the women from his reading club.

He disliked that - thinking it would have been better to forget his wife’s whereabouts at most times; to be blissfully unaware of her activities just like most other MP husbands. To think she was home when she was not or to think she was at some dinner with her reading club when she was with her lover in London, making love in a hotel room as one does.

Or at Arrow House, where she’d made him promise he’d never cheat on her, or anywhere else, really, but at least not at Arrow House. Then, he’d catch her, with her lover, in bed together, awake and alive and all wrapped around each other, in love, and while he would become very angry, maybe he’d also feel some kind of relief.

That someone else was treating Lizzie the way she deserved; that he didn’t have to try anymore and that he could just walk into the barley field and proceed.

A man picked up and Tommy waited for the boy to come back with Jessie Eden.

«Tonight,» he said, «I’m still a while away from Birmingham. We need to talk.»

«I gathered,» she replied. She didn’t sound flattered, and maybe the rally really had destroyed that aura of mystery that still made him attractive, in her eyes; or maybe it had just added to all the contradictions she seemed to like so much about him.

She sounded annoyed, if anything, that she’d had to babysit a rebellious rich girl, and a Shelby, at that; that she’d presumably tried to keep her safe while they were being raided, though not so successfully, after all.

She said she’d be there, though she didn’t sound happy about it. She must have assumed it was business. In a way, it was: Maggie was business and Maggie couldn’t be seen at those meetings, for the company’s reputation and for the entire family’s. For his. He had to deliver a warning, maybe a threat, and even then Lizzie wouldn’t need to know a thing.

He hadn’t spoken to Jessie Eden since the rally and he hadn’t missed her. Had they been other people, something would have clicked with Jessie Eden, if they had been in any situation other than the one they were in: she was outspoken, but she could also keep her secrets, and it had been nice, really, when they’d been together, though never spontaneous and he'd never considered it making love.

It had been almost like the first times he’d done it with Lizzie, after the war, though he was no longer a young soldier who’d become lost on his way back home: but it had had the same feeling, that of an enjoyable business transaction. With Lizzie, in spite of everything, it had grown into something else - pretty soon, into comfortable companionship; and now, God only knew. With Jessie Eden, in spite of everything, of her hope, mostly, it had become neither, and maybe it was youth he was chasing, who knew.

To think that he’d fucked Lizzie like that once, as an enjoyable business transaction; and that he’d convinced himself that he was still doing it, even after he’d carved his own shape into Lizzie’s hips, pretty early on. Maybe not love, but comfort; and mute understanding, no matter what. So, even now, every night he knew that he’d find his spot against her side, if only he wanted to, and it was enough to keep him safe until the morning. People saw them in daylight, and they thought, what a distinguished young couple, isn’t he ashamed of having such a tall wife? But with Lizzie things happened at night, and no one knew those things.

He had carved nothing at all into Jessie Eden’s young body and he wasn’t trying to convince himself otherwise, or that he felt any particular way towards her; he knew that it would have been a lost cause. But he felt it now, and it was like a heavy cloud had set on his nape. It wasn’t desire, because in almost forty years on this Earth he’d learned to recognize what lust felt like, and it hadn’t been that. There was a tinge of hurt, something that made him clench his teeth, but it wasn’t lust. It had been a while, and a man had needs, so every night he looked at his Lizzie, at the Tommy-sized hole he’d carved on her side - but since the wedding it had become a can of worms he had no idea how to open, so he never did.

He drove back and the cloud already in his head got even denser, pain radiating from behind his eyes to the middle of his brain, apparently, where a dozen tiny rivers of pain united into a pool that almost made him stop by a field a couple of times, to throw up or to wait until it was gone. The air itself was denser now, and he was expecting the golden hair at any time.

He’d been calm, yesterday, when he’d driven to London to talk to the old man; he’d been annoyed, at the rebellious rich girl, at the old man, then at Solomons who had hidden so much from him, but now he couldn’t bring himself to care.

He thought he saw a couple of specks of golden hair, but it was wild animals both times.

He was relieved that it was late when he got to Warwickshire, that it was already dark. He didn’t have a lot of time before Jessie’s arrival; Edith dutifully reminded him that Lizzie was at some dinner with some ladies from her reading club. She was sitting at a long table with fine china, his Lizzie, talking about Wuthering Heights. In the meantime he freshened up, changed into a clean suit, his old one ruined by the journey and the unexpected stop at Margate.

He was almost done when Edith announced that someone called Jessie Eden had arrived; that’s when Tommy saw that his hands were shaking. They’d been doing that for some time; he recalled having a little more trouble than usual to button his shirt. Just a little, the buttons reluctant to go into their rightful holes. Maybe that’s why it had taken him so long. He wondered what time it was; he was sure Lizzie would come back late, as she always did when she had dinner at some other wife’s house. He wondered whether she felt out of place, whether they were friends. Whether she was better than him, at this whole high society thing.

He stared at his hand until it stopped shaking, then walked down the stairs. Grace was staring at him, but it was picture-Grace - flat, two-dimensional and safe. The air didn’t have that particular quality, though the room itself was spinning. He couldn’t remember the last time he'd eaten. He was usually better at eating than this - it still didn’t come naturally, but he knew he couldn’t let himself lose too much weight. He’d had breakfast in London, he thought. He’d eaten something solid together with tea.

Jessie Eden was sitting in the living room, her purse on her legs; she hadn’t even removed her jacket.

«I guess this is about the girl,» she said, before he could even speak.

He nodded. «Were you aware of who she was?»

«She gave a fake surname,» Jessie told him. He guessed it made sense; she couldn’t go by either of hers.

«When did you realize who she was?» Tommy insisted.

«Straight away,» the woman replied, «I read the newspapers. There were pictures. And besides, nobody else knew her.»

He nodded. He had to remind himself sometimes that that day had meant a lot of things to many different people - that it hadn’t been a private celebration of love as much as a public event. They’d tried to keep it exclusive, hadn’t invited everyone they could have, but apparently pictures had been taken, Maggie’s former teachers at the boarding school interviewed. Tommy only read the papers when he had a reason to, and less than usual, nowadays, so he hadn’t read anything about it. Maybe that had been a mistake - maybe the teachers, the classmates, the maids at her former boarding school, maybe they could have warned him that he was not taking in a meek stray.

«Why did the police come?» Tommy asked again. She sighed. He realized it wasn’t a good question, and not one he had any right to ask, given that he was still trying to make sense of why those men had come, that December night at the rally, why those men had come and shot his sniper. So how could he ask her about it, now, with a clean conscience, what with that saying, about the man who lives in a glass house. That he should not throw rocks, not even as a last defense.

She didn't seem too distraught about the police, though, maybe she was used to it, or she wanted to look like she was; that wouldn’t have surprised him, because he’d been involved in that kind of meetings once, before the war, and even after, when he’d consummated his business transactions with Jessie Eden in order to secure a spot in the House of Commons. He knew the police was always behind the corner and you could only minimize the risk and learn to live with it.

He’d consummated his transactions in nice sceneries, always appropriated, like that warehouse, never at the house because of Lizzie and because he knew she wasn’t the type of woman who could be impressed with fine china and housekeepers. She was young, younger than Lizzie, and she hadn’t had such a rough life - her thighs, soft and white, were all he could remember, the way he’d looked at them like he’d never seen thighs before, and…

«Maybe her presence tipped them off,» Jessie replied after a few moments of silence, which made him remember his question, and where he was, «or maybe Smith said something. We had doubts already, about him.»

Tommy nodded, deciding it wasn’t so important after all, finding himself uninterested in the life of Jessie Eden’s Communists, in Smith and their suspicions, in the police and in Maggie, now that she was safe in the blond girl’s arms; now that he’d remembered that white thighs still existed, that many things still existed other than the cloud in his head and little else.

She could tell he did not care, and didn’t continue. «Nice house,» she said eventually, and Tommy thought, here we are. She’s not here to talk shop either - everything we had to say, we’d said it. What was there to say, in the end?

Of course he could make his little speech - to watch out for the girl, to keep her away from the meetings, to hurt her to keep her away, if she must, and so on. But he knew Jessie Eden was smart and he knew that there was no point in trying to keep a twenty-year old from what she really wanted to do, because he’d seen it once already.

He’d seen it all.

He had no white thighs, Tommy, nothing like that anymore - God only knew what Jessie Eden thought when she thought about him, when she desired him, because Tommy was positive there was nothing left of him by now. He was almost forty and he felt like he was already dead.

«You say you read the papers,» Tommy started, «but you hadn’t heard about my wedding, it seems.» Hoping that would be straightforward enough, still thinking about those white thighs. It had been dark, and they’d looked blue in the light. She’d been so different then, so different now.

The way she’d looked at Lizzie after the election, or more accurately the way she’d looked at him. He knew she didn’t blame Lizzie for any of it, because if she had, he was sure he wouldn’t have been able to see her again. She blamed him, and for that she was right, because he’d lied, and lying by omission is still somewhat lying. He’d let her on and for that he was sorry. He’d never even considered the thought of marrying Jessie Eden, but maybe she was, and it scared him.

«Wasn’t expecting a child, at least,» Jessie replied, acknowledging it.

She was smiling, nervously, or maybe trying not to follow the script too closely: the script where the betrayed woman reminds the man of the promise he’d made, once, to leave his wife, or go against his family’s wishes to marry her; the man never does. He lies and betrays, and that’s what Tommy had done, though he hadn’t promised anything and he was grateful for it. He felt sorry for it, though it didn’t keep him up at night. His and Jessie Eden’s lives had merely crossed their paths once or twice; hers was still free enough to go wherever she pleased.

They hadn’t become entangled in a million knots that only allowed them a few months away at a time, in between quick fucks on desks, paid or not, or by the docks, hidden underneath stone arches, too familiar hands holding each other. Knots one can’t even start to try to loosen - to a degree, he knew the only way out of those knots, and he’d tried it in the barley field back in December.

Of course he hadn’t tried to escape the knots, back then, or not just the knots, the knots were the least of his problems and sometimes they felt like they weren’t even a problem at all, but they’d been there, he hadn’t forgotten about them. They were Arthur and they were Polly and they were Finn and Charlie and Ruby and they were Lizzie.

Those same knots had prevented them from drifting too far apart and she’d come. It had been a knot, he thought, a stubborn one. Couldn’t keep her away.

«We weren’t expecting a child, either,» he said, truthfully, because he’d pulled out, underneath the stone arch, and though he’d been told that it wasn’t the most reliable way, it had always worked until then. But then it hadn’t worked anymore, or maybe he hadn’t been as careful as the other times, since he’d become so accustomed to Lizzie’s body, he hadn’t been quick enough or he had been sloppy, and Ruby had come. Which wasn’t that terrible of an outcome, all things considered, because he loved Ruby, and she’d been the push he’d needed to propose to Lizzie, which was something he still didn’t regret. It hurt, and it kept him up at night, at least since Finn’s wedding; but he hadn’t regretted it.

«You look like a happy family,» Jessie replied, her voice low, which scared him. You have no idea, he thought, and then he thought she must have said it as a courtesy, because no one in their right mind could think that they were. Or maybe she really thought they were, maybe they were what Jessie Eden, in all of her youthful glory, wanted from life - wealth and a husband and children, and not just seizing the means of production, speaking at rallies and the never ending fight. He pitied her, then, if that was the case.

He sat closer to her, crossing his legs in front of him, pouring himself a glass. Asked himself whether he was sure - whether he really wanted to do this; whether it was lust or that other emotion, the one he couldn’t quite name. Whether it would make it better or worse. Then he thought of her white thighs, almost blue, once again.

The thing about Lizzie, at first, when she’d been just a whore he’d liked a little better than other whores, was that she hadn’t been a person, not in the real sense of the word; she had been a vessel, and all the pain in the room had been his. This had allowed his pain to fill every corner, it had allowed him to focus entirely on it.

Then he’d grown tired of his pain, maybe, or hers had fought back, to be seen - that’s where he and Lizzie had gone wrong: when he’d stopped thinking of her as a vessel, when he hadn’t been able to ignore her pain. Which was as loud and as present as his had been in that room, and it scared him. It was black eyes and pale skin and the way she’d taken the week off after the abortion, and he’d left her some money anyway, because for her to take a week off she must have almost died. It was bruises and eyes crusty with tears and shaking hands when she took him immediately after other johns. And it was harder, then, to become hard and remain that way, to allow his own pain to fill every corner.

It was easier to make love with a vessel; and it was a vessel he was after tonight. And it couldn’t work, if Jessie Eden was hurt, because he couldn’t ignore it. It was easier to make love with a vessel, but sometime along the journey he’d realized that even the most miserable man on earth hid his pain as well, and that had been his downfall.

Jessie Eden was looking at him strange now, her previous comment about how happy of a family they were seemingly forgotten. Her back was straight, legs crossed - from the way she was sitting, he could tell, she was trying to seduce him. Which was exactly what he’d been aiming for, when he’d stopped for the booth, when he’d remembered about Lizzie’s dinner with her reading club.

Maybe she did think they made a happy family, and wasn’t jealous of it - she just didn’t care enough about it - which would have been understandable, and Tommy was reasonably sure he would have done the same.

He should have said something, anything, but he’d forgotten how to seduce a woman, apparently, now that there was no cause requiring it, no reason and no plot, just a hint of lust with a tinge of sadness.

And something did break the silence, though not his words: the sound of footsteps on the staircase, a steady rhythm he recognized. At first he though it was Grace, emerging from the picture where she lived like some sort of Dorian Gray, but then he listened to the footsteps, and he wanted to smile, because that was what Lizzie sounded like on heels, six foot tall and as loud as a general marching towards the battle field.

He wanted to smile, but he didn’t, because the next thought was, why is Lizzie here. Dinners with the reading club usually ended late. She shouldn’t have been here, he wanted to scream, even if he was no longer sure that he’d end up sleeping with Jessie Eden tonight. But be it a Waterloo, be it a Somme, Lizzie was not part of the plan tonight.

He knew she wouldn’t cause a scene - that was not like her; not unless there was some immediate danger to their safety or that of their children, and there was not, not strictly speaking. Would she get mad, his Lizzie, would she buy that he was talking to Jessie Eden because of Maggie and her short-sighted activism? But she was smart, his Lizzie, she’d worked with him for too long: she would have known that there was no reason for the other woman to be there.

Not in this home, she’d make him swear, and don’t touch your children for twenty-four hours, both before and after - the latter, he could probably keep. But he’d been bold, he thought, he could have asked her out, but he’d been tired, and weary, and it had come naturally to ask her to come to Arrow House. So that he could have some kind of advantage, from his knowledge of the place, with all its traps and hidden corners, to improve his odds, in a battle.

They could still pretend it was nothing, that they were just talking about Maggie and the meetings and how to keep young girls from doing whatever their heart desired - that they were talking about the capital and the workers and the conditions and the women’s bathroom.

But not after Jessie Eden stood up, looked up at Lizzie with something resembling shame in her eyes, and disdain, and challenge, but also shame, and then walked through the door like she knew the way.

Tommy felt it collapse underneath his feet then, the floor, and the mansion, and Warwickshire itself, and Lizzie, who was still holding the light coat she wore to social occasions when the weather was kind, turned on her heels and walked away, but he knew she’d been back.

He knew she’d just gone to put down the coat, but it took her longer than necessary for such a simple task. He felt her walk down the hallway, and then back, and then back again, on her heels, like a general.

He hoped she wouldn’t lose it, because he’d already had to hold her, the few times she’d lost it. It hadn’t happened many times - in comparison, he’d probably behaved in worse ways, way more often than she had.

Still somewhere Tommy is still holding Lizzie by the wrists, as she screams, and cries, and asks him questions he’ll never be able to answer, as he makes promises he’ll never be able to keep. There’s a dead army man beside them and he’s not the first and he won’t be the last; outside horses are racing and his other women don’t suspect a thing.

But she was calm when she came back; he’d lit himself a cigarette in the meantime. The smoke was starting to fill the living room - maybe the smoke would engulf them all, and they’d collapse under the building and that would be it. Lizzie was calm, but her eyes were swollen red. Her makeup was not smudged, not yet.

She was staring at him, and he was trying to stare back. To look imposing, to look like he somehow still had the upper hand. He was sitting, she was standing tall. He wanted to bury his face in her stomach again, into the space he’d carved long ago.

«If you’re so disgusted by me, you’re free to go. I thought you wanted to,» she said.

He knew that she knew that his Christmas gift had been an offer - he knew that was not the point.

«I could maybe understand if I didn’t want to,» she continued. «But you haven’t touched me in months, Tom.»

So that was it, the can of worms, the gangrenous foot he’d covered with a blanket and refused to look at, since the night Maggie had joined the family and with her yet another ghost.

«I… it was about Maggie. Lizzie, you know the Communists…»

«Spare us,» she said. She said _us_. «It’s been months.»

It had.

«I… don’t know,» he said, which was something he found himself saying often, nowadays. «I don’t know what to do. How to behave. I don’t know how to talk about it.»

And Lizzie looked… not understanding, but almost; unimpressed, and maybe it wasn’t something she could accept, that he could be a grown man and not find the words. That he could conquer the world but not this.

«Because I care,» he tried, suddenly remembering Ada’s words - Ada would have known the words; maybe Maggie had a point when she kissed other women. Maybe it wasn’t women, maybe men were also supposed to be able to provide whatever it was that he could not provide. Maybe it was no longer acceptable, at his age, to be unable to provide it, and here he was now, a pitiful thing, because he’d grown to accept his limits and he doubted that he even could. He’d always suspected it, since the war - that he was broken, in some way that could not be fixed. He’d lived in fear of Grace learning it, but with Lizzie, he’d never really tried to hide it.

«I care,» he tried once again.

«Of course you do,» Lizzie replied after a while. «Because you look like shit, Tom.»

She said it matter of factly, but he could tell it had shocked her too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo. Just came out of a weird time and life is... weird. Hope you enjoyed this chap! I'm not entirely satisfied with it but c'est la vie. Also we're probably passing 40k words with this one and it's officially the longest thing I've ever published.  
> Seems like there's... some kind of communication going on, finally. Don't worry, the 'who did it' plot will resume soon!


	11. Truce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _«Then why did you stay?»_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to Lizzie’s POV. The writing process for this one has been long and weird but I’m kind of satisfied with the results, except for the last part (cw: sexy times) because that was just weird.  
> The reviews I got so far fill me with so much joy you guys can’t even imagine!

He looked like a chased animal, later that night, as he settled into bed. She had decided to let him sleep in the same bed as her; once upon a time she would have slept in a guest room for less. Once upon a time he would have sought refuge in the room he’d shared with Grace for nothing. So maybe they _were_ moving forward; though most nights they only felt like they were drowning.

He was lying on his back and so was she, beside him, a safe distance away.

«You don’t have to treat me differently because of what happened,» she started. He closed his eyes. «Because that’s what I always liked the most about you, that you treated me like any other woman.»

She realized she was talking about many years ago, wondered why it still bothered her so much. Whether she’d ever stop being Lizzie the whore.

«Did I,» he whispered. He did it to hurt her, she’d understood early on. They weren’t the casual remarks they so desperately tried to be, otherwise they wouldn’t have been so specific. They meant he took his time to dissect her, to search for that sore spot one just doesn’t find casually. Other women he’d fucked and then carelessly dropped back on the streets. But not her, no matter how hard he tried to make it seem like he had.

«That you made me forget who I was,» she said again, «what I did for a living.»

He nodded, though he knew she could barely see it. It was dark. Through the years he’d learned how one is supposed to treat a whore, Lizzie knew, from the way the girls left his room in the morning - he hadn’t mastered it at first, or maybe he hadn’t been able to, with her. He’d let himself get involved.

They’d broken the unspoken rule straight away, and the rule was: you can’t care for whores. Not personally. She should have pushed him away, but that was hard to do, for someone who was huddling for warmth like she was; and the way he withheld the warmth except for those few precious moments, those breadcrumbs, made it even more precious in her eyes.

«Did I, Lizzie,» he repeated.

She remained silent, but he knew she wouldn’t drop it.

«Epsom,» she said. Because for some reason she didn’t feel Mosley’s hands on her body - because she didn’t remember it all, or maybe because it hadn’t been long enough, who knew - but she could feel that ache, that old wound pulsating, maybe Mosley had reopened it somehow, maybe it had never closed in the first place.

He sighed. Not this time, she thought, not again; you can’t behave like it belongs to the past, you can’t keep pretending nothing happened at all. It can’t belong to the past if it keeps me up at night - it’s not something you can have a nice debate with. It should be far away but it isn’t. It doesn’t care about what it’s supposed to be

«Epsom,» she repeated, «was probably the most hurtful thing you ever did.»

She turned to see him swallow, just barely, in the dark.

«Then why did you stay?»

It came out muffled. It surprised her; she’d never thought he’d ask. It was a question she’d often been tempted to ask herself, though any answer at this point would have been useless. It had been done; it could not be undone.

«Because…» she began, tidying up her thought, listing them neatly on a blank piece of paper, in a few bullet points. «Because yours was the only family I had left,» she said. «With Ma dead, and Pa dead, and Jo dead, I had nobody left.»

He sighed.

«Because what else could I do, when no matter what I did, I was always going to be a former whore? Of course I could have looked for openings at the BSA, or I could have moved somewhere else, where nobody knew me. But I…»

She stopped to think, about why she hadn’t done it and about whether she knew the answer or not.

«I guess I was tired,» she said, «I felt old. Much older than I actually was.»

She’d only been in her twenties then, but felt like Ma must have felt towards the end of her life, after losing a husband to the war and a daughter to consumption and Lizzie to herself.

«Just that?» Tommy said. «Just old?»

She didn’t reply.

«We all felt old, when we came back from the war,» he said.

«Do you still?»

She got no reply.

«Because I do.»

«So you stayed,» he continued, «because you saw us as family, and because you felt you had no other options?»

He’d done it again, she realized - the slight insinuations that even though she’d perceived them as family, they’d never been hers, and would never be.

«Closest thing to,» she pointed out, then backtracked; seeing the bait, deciding not to fall in that old trap.

«Well, I’m happy you…»

«And because I loved you,» Lizzie said in the end.

That stopped him in the tracks of whatever he was about to say; he fell still and silent as the room grew darker. She turned on her side until she was looking at him and he was looking at the ceiling, and so much she could still tell, from his silhouette.

«Maybe I still do,» she added, almost whispering, hoping it would give him that answer, the one he was looking for - hoping it would make him shut up forever, turn into a statue lying supine on their marital bed, staring at the ceiling until the end of their days.

Then for a while he said nothing, and she wasn’t expecting him to.

«I want to make sure,» he said at last, «that I can trust you completely. With everything.»

«I don’t understand,» she replied. «You know you can, Tom.»

«When I walked in on Mosley, that night,» he began, and his voice was shaking, «he said something strange.»

«He’d drunk some,» she explained.

«He implied,» and he was ignoring her words, and she was scared, «that that wasn’t the first time something like this happened.»

She felt her chest become warmer, like a fire had been lit in it. «That’s why?» she asked, «that’s why all this time you haven’t touched me once?»

There was a tinge of fear in his eyes that told her that it wasn’t that - that it wasn’t cheating he was thinking of. He’d seen her, after all - he’d seen her unconscious; it would have been clear even to the most naive eye. Besides, in spite of everything, he’d always been kind.

Many men who were otherwise perfectly normal, she’d learned through her first job in Small Heath - many men who could otherwise pass as perfectly normal actually harbored a hatred for women strong enough to scare off anyone; and they harbored it without even knowing. Tommy didn’t. Tommy loved women, sometimes with a love that felt more like misplaced guilt, but at the end of the day he was kind.

What did he mean, then, if it wasn’t an accusation - what did he always mean, every time he spoke?

«I don’t know what happened between you and Mosley all those years ago,» he said. «Maybe one day you’ll tell me.»

She’d often wondered whether she ever would; it hadn’t been different from many other johns and that had always been the main obstacle. The anonymity of it all. Had it been a single incident, she thought, maybe it would have been easier to talk about. But it had been hundreds, day after day, multiple times a day, until almost everything she’d ever believed, everything she’d been taught about those women, it had become her normal, and then there had been nothing to talk about.

And even if there had been something - which words to use, and how heavy her voice?

«I don't know either,» she replied, forgetting about it, «about that night. About what happened.»

He nodded.

«I was passed out. But I know this - I have never in my life laid a hand on that man without coercion being involved.»

She knew her voice was shaking and her shoulders excessively straight, her jaw tense, a portrait of pride that belonged to an art gallery, to revolutions long sedated in far away lands.

He stared at her, took it in, then nodded.

«I need to make sure. Swear on your Ma, Lizzie.»

He sounded like he was begging her; she knew he was.

«I swear,» she replied once she realized he wasn’t going to drop it.

«Swear on Ruby,» he insisted.

«I swear on Ruby,» she agreed.

And then, seeing him so vulnerable - feeling selfish but thinking of the animals who don’t call it being selfish, they call it survival; she remembered what he’d said weeks ago, weeks that felt like lifetimes, lifetimes spent together, in spite of, somehow.

«Why do you need to be so sure?» she asked. _Because you couldn’t have survived being betrayed by me_?

She knew now how those words had made her feel, though she’d felt guilty immediately after without even knowing why. She’d been drunk on those words, drunk on power and the feeling that her man’s life was in her hands, no matter how briefly it was. The opposite of what she’d been used to, but also a responsibility she’d never really asked for.

He didn’t reply.

There were insects outside, crickets, maybe, or maybe they were frogs, she was a city girl, Lizzie, she wasn’t used to nature and its sounds even though she’d been living in Warwickshire for years now. She’d always be a city girl, perhaps. The same insects as most other nights when it was warm, loud and clear with their voices, but hidden from sight. Sometimes she wondered where they lived, what they looked like. They must have been small, though their voices were so loud.

«These past few years…» she began after a while, after a never ending choir of crickets’ voices, feeling like her entire throat was closing up, but knowing she had to say it now, now that there were actual words to say it, now that she’d already revealed the worst part.

«You’ve made me happy,» she stated, in the end. «You have made me very happy, on a few memorable occasions. You have been a great husband for a few twenty minutes stretches along the way. You’ve been great at Ruby’s birth and not just then. When you proposed to me, I was touched.»

He’d closed his eyes, maybe feeling like he didn’t deserve any of that - you’re right, Lizzie thought, you don’t. «And then you’ve been terrible. But every time you did a nice little thing - every time we fucked or you said I looked nice or even just exchanged a nice word - then that would be enough, until the next kind word.»

It sounded unnecessarily solemn. Being a whore it had been ingrained in her mind - you need to disappear in the room, in every way except for the physical. It felt like she was fighting, like every organ in her body was struggling to get the words out, like it was against her nature to make an entire speech about how Tommy had made her feel.

When she’d told him that she wanted to divorce, when she’d laid out the conditions - those had been actions, tangible things. The small hill of breadcrumbs he’d dropped her throughout the years, that only existed between them, and they couldn’t see it or touch it or do anything about it, at all.

His eyes were still closed, and she was terrified of seeing tears come out of them. She wasn’t ready for another barley field - they’d both been possessed that night, high with a strength that had probably come from God himself. But now Lizzie was lucid, and she felt weary, and she didn’t know how to handle something like this.

«I’m sorry,» he said in the end, his voice also shaking, his hands curled into fists close to his sides. «For what it’s worth.»

«Then why,» she began carefully, feeling like he owed her this, owed her an answer, and she had to pick the question carefully. Why did you marry me, she was about to ask; but their marriage wasn’t but a parenthesis of the last ten years, she thought, an unexpected one, but a parenthesis nonetheless.

«Why did you let me stay?»

He sighed, joined his hands and put them on his chest, the way dead men are arranged in their coffins, and she couldn’t see enough to check if his eyes were closed.

«Because you were one of the very few people in the family I had left,» he said.

And he said it - he said _in_ the family. Lizzie didn’t linger on that word, didn’t try to understand why he’d said it. Once, she’d seen the Shelbies as one indivisible unit, a monolith of enviable family ties, hard as diamond and impossible to break; perhaps she’d thought that because she’d missed her own family, or because they always tried so hard to look like they really were a monolith, to keep all discrepancies inside four walls so that enemies wouldn't take advantage of them.

_(And God knew the Shelbies had enemies)._

It was too late to know, anyway.

But since working for them it had become impossible to ignore that they had wounds too, wounds they’d inflicted upon each other during the years. They kept coming back to each other, and maybe that was why they were family (Lizzie had kept coming back to him too; did that make her family more than the ring she wore on her finger?).

But the wounds remained; they had been sewn together in places, but even with the seams stitched tightly, scars do remain.

He was copying her reasons, she realized, wondered whether he’d copy the rest of them too. Had he let her stay because he, too, was tired - because it would have been too hard to drive her away? Was Lizzie just a leech to him, hanging on his skin to steal all the blood she could, all the life she could suck from his body, and he let her because he knew no other way?

But where would she go once she’d killed him?

Besides, he’d tried, quite hard, to drive her away. Sos then why marry her, in the end?

«Because…» he could no longer speak, and she saw that he was at a loss for words.

«Because no one knew me,» he whispered, «no one knows me, not as well as you do.»

She nodded, though she knew he couldn’t see it.

«Because with them I had to be someone else, but you already know who I am.»

He moved his hands, put them underneath his head.

«You saw me when I was tired, after the war,» he said again. «There was no coming back then. You know who I am. You know and you never left.»

That’s what I was asking, Lizzie thought, why did you let me stay; but she knew that when he was like that one could only let him talk, and hope that something understandable would come out of the stream of words.

«Grace saw me once, as well. After the war gunshots turned me into a different man,» he explained. «She saw me once and she didn’t leave. That changed everything for us.»

She remained silent. He’d never spoken about Grace like that, so openly, using such concrete words. He didn’t speak of her much these days, but after her death, when they’d started fucking again - which had been only a couple of short months after the shooting - after he was spent, he would lie back down on the bed, or sit on his chair, at the desk, and start talking. The sentences often didn’t make sense, neither individually nor put together; they never formed a coherent thought.

He’d already told her that he didn’t know the words to talk about what was going on inside his head, but maybe he didn’t realize that he needed to speak nonetheless. So he tried his best, she guessed, without even knowing.

Results varied. She knew she had to let him speak.

«But with Grace, with them, I could be anyone. They weren’t from Birmingham. They weren’t from Small Heath. They knew where I came from but they didn’t _know_. I could be MP. I could be the king. The power, Lizzie, do you know the power?»

She found no viable answer, not straight away. She’d known many powers - to let a man come or to leave him dry. To be a good lover or a barely passable one. But they had all been relative freedoms - they all existed because Lizzie never had the power to begin with; the power to say no, and to leave.

Maybe it would have been accurate to say that she’d struggled with powerlessness; that she’d been happy, when she’d become rich, because of the power that money gave her, that particular type of power that came with wealth. She wasn’t interested in gambling, in buying Fabergé eggs; she just wanted to know it was there, for her to use, should need arise. To know that the past was in the past and it was not coming back.

Money was power to her, Lizzie thought. She suspected it was partially true for him as well. They’d known misery, the two of them; which was another thing that _they_ never had.

«You don’t think I’m the king, Lizzie, you won’t believe it for a second,» he was saying, having continued in his ramblings without really waiting for an answer from her. «You treat me like they treat them at asylums, don’t you, like my friend, the sniper. They killed the sniper the night of the rally. Did you know that?»

She shook her head.

«Did you know that?»

«No,» she said in the end. Her throat was dry. «I didn’t know that.»

«Shot him right in the head. You’re not scared of this, aren’t you, Lizzie? They all were. Even Grace, after she came back. Stuff like this I could never tell anyone else. Are you scared, Lizzie?»

«I am,» she said.

He paused. He was breathing fast. «So am I,» he agreed.

She cleared her throat, hoping it would become a little less dry and her shoulders less tense and the air in the room less dark.

«You stayed because you had almost no one else and because I knew the real Tommy, then?»

She was testing him, maybe. She was trying to do the same thing that he’d done, without really knowing why. Maybe it would all build up to the revelation - to those words she would have died to hear from him just a few months ago, and maybe even now.

«Because you were mine,» he said in the end. «When John…»

That made her freeze - she hadn’t expected him to bring up John of all things.

«I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you,» he said, and she knew he meant it for all the wrong reasons, but he meant it nonetheless.

That he hadn’t loved her as much as the idea that any day of the week, every time he’d felt the need, he could have found her there, at his disposal.

«Then I thought that was selfish.»

«So you hired me,» she continued for him.

«You deserved it,» he replied, sounding sincere; «and besides, it would have been dangerous to hire someone else who didn’t already know. You had the skills. Kind of.»

«I’m getting better,» she told him, without really knowing why. She’d never felt the need to justify herself, her shoddy spelling, her clumsy handwriting or her total lack of manners, at least at first (she’d learned). She’d learned to take pride in it, no matter how inconvenient it was.

«Even if you misspelled my name on every envelope from now on,» he began, then stopped.

She discovered that she was waiting to hear it, whatever he was going to say next.

«You’re the lighthouse,» he said at last.

They fell asleep like that, without fucking - Lizzie hadn’t been in the mood. She suspected he hadn’t been either. He wasn’t one of those men who only came to the girls when they were frustrated with their job, or angry at their wives, or when their favorite team had lost. It wasn’t his way of letting out the steam.

She awoke softly the next morning when the light outside was already warm. It looked like a beautiful spring day, through the curtains. In a few minutes she would get up and see with her own eyes. But now the bed was soft, and she was quiet.

There was a hand on her, stroking it softly with its index and middle finger. It was stroking the back of her hand and it was calloused, but very gentle. She was lying on her back, so she turned around; the hand tightened its grip on hers.

He had small hands for a man, while hers were big and long fingered. But his were strong and firm, never shaky: when his hands shook she knew things were bad. They weren’t shaking now, they started caressing hers slowly again as soon as she settled on her side.

Then the hand moved, still slowly, to her face, and he cupped her cheek with an amount of care she’d only ever seen him reserve for his children, and for her forehead when she’d let her head rest in his lap after giving birth to Ruby.

Now she’d done nothing to warrant that kindness; he was just giving it to her. He usually did it at night, after he came back from a long day at work, whatever that work involved. Those moments were theirs and theirs alone, and the guns, the blood, the screams and the money were left there just behind the door. Lizzie’s troubles were, too; they weren’t hidden inside herself, like they had been when she’d still been a working girl. They were on the other side of the door. Together with his.

They weren’t in the room with them now, and Finn’s wedding was outside with them. Maybe their sorrows, like them, needed some time to rest. To part for a while before returning to their host.

He was on his side as well, facing her, then his upper body moved forwards and his lips were on hers. She was expecting him to deepen it straight away, but he let his lips rest on hers as his hand was still stroking her face. Then he deepened it, and the hand moved lower.

He played with her breast, softly, then with more strength; her breasts were small enough to fit fully inside his cupped hand. He knew how to pinch the nipple when the right time came, he knew what she liked, because in those ten years he’d learned: the hardest part had been learning how to communicate it to him, when it had become more than a service she was providing.

She let him lie on top, running her hands on his shoulders marred with scars but otherwise white as clean sheets, waited for him to come inside.

For the longest time she’d thought penetration did nothing to her. Maybe it had been ruined by too many bad experiences, maybe she’d never allowed herself to enjoy it. Thankfully she hadn’t been one of those girls who’d lost their virginity on the job, but she hadn’t been that far off. With him, and with a couple of others, John, Angel - with them she had learned that it could be pleasurable too.

But his was the cock she’d grown the most comfortable with, if it even made sense to make such a classification. She’d learned every part of his body by heart, and that included his cock. It was a good looking cock, all things considered, and it was his, so she loved it.

He was being more rough than usual, she noticed immediately - maybe it was making up for the time they’d lost, maybe it was something else; he didn’t apologize and didn’t ask her if she was alright. He knew that she’d tell him, like she’d told him before, even before he’d stopped paying her.

She liked this, however. She could feel the shivers down her back and in her stomach, she could feel her control over her movements slip away, and she knew she was not faking it, no more than she would fake it for the rest of her life, probably.

Usually, he was rather silent, but a few moans were still escaping his lips; hers filled the silences. He was thrusting deeply and leaning on her thighs for support, and by now he knew she could support his weight just fine. She could tell when he was getting closer, by the way his hand convulsed on her breast, pinching maybe a little too hard.

He kissed her right before coming, then raised his head just enough to reach with his hand and pull out. They’d mutually decided not to bring another life into the world, because the world was not a suitable for another life.

(Not in exchange for Lizzie’s, not after the terrible night of Ruby’s birth.)

Afterwards he collapsed on top of her, and she let him stay until he became too heavy, then she made him roll to the side. There he hugged her from the side, arms around her torso, face between her breasts, and from the sounds he made she was afraid he had started to cry.

His eyes were damp when he lifted them, looking at her. It had been months, but now they were sweaty and in each other’s arms; it had been mere hours since their last talk, and though there was still so much to say, and Lizzie knew he knew it too - there were no words in the room this time, and if there were, there was only one, and that was truce.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I used the word ‘cock’. It was strange.  
> This chapter would have been ready a bit sooner if it hadn’t been for the sex scene - I considered not adding it but I think it needed to be done given their recent post-Finn’s wedding arc. I’m still bad at sex scenes and I can’t make them too long or too graphic but I’m working on it.
> 
> They communicated, sort of. Lizzie said the L word. Plot will be advancing soon, I think we're closer to the end than to the beginning of it!  
> Thank you so much to everyone who read and commented <3


	12. Into the sea of light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _And every time she’d asked Polly about it, she’d replied the way she replied when she was talking about dreams, or ghosts, or other things Lizzie didn’t really believe in, and maybe neither did Polly, because what she said seldom made sense. But Tommy wasn’t a ghost, he wasn’t a dream; he was flesh and blood and Lizzie had the proof, right inside of her._
> 
> _And yet, they'd never left her, and as she’d felt herself fade away, into that sea of light, she’d thought, how foolish - how foolish of me to think that some things can truly be left behind._  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life has been crazy, I miss the times when I only had exams...  
> Sorry for yet another super late update, I just came back to something resembling stability very recently. However in spite of everything I couldn’t abandon my baby!  
> Wanted to address a few other things about Lizzie and Tommy, like the ballet party turned shitshow in S5 and Ruby’s birth.

It was only after a few days that Lizzie remembered what Tommy had told her that strange night - or at least one thing he’d told her, among everything else. It had been almost meaningless at first, and now she could barely believe he’d said it, because it was absurd.

At first she’d been too busy to truly comprehend it - busy being confused, offended, then confused again, too busy realizing how hurt she could get, and how easily.

 _«He implied,»_ he’d said, _«that that wasn’t the first time something like this happened.»_

That afternoon, she thought she could still hear his voice as he'd said it, echoing through the sitting room. The space around her was filled by sunlight, and that air that comes with mansions, always heavy with dust; the afternoons were long in Warwickshire when she had nothing to do, and those were the most dangerous hours.

She’d thought that Mosley had meant their first encounter, at first. Though it had happened many years before, when she’d already met Tom, but way before their whole thing had started; it had been a quick and cheap and unpleasant affair, but not worse than many others she’d had.

And if she’d sought refuge from Mosley and from men like him in Tommy’s arms, well, he couldn’t really know that, and he couldn’t really blame her, because that wouldn’t have been wrong. Lizzie never once blamed herself for seeking comfort, when she'd been huddling for warmth.

But she knew that wasn’t it. Something in Tommy’s razor sharp eyes that terrible night had told Mosley, unequivocally, that the past was the past and it wasn’t the past they were facing now.

_(It was his hands on his waistband, fumbling with his belt. It was Lizzie's eyelids, as heavy as Pol's velvet curtains on her eyes.)_

No, it was not the past they were facing, for once; that afternoon, among that sea of light, she was remembering something else. Something about her last birthday, the way Tommy had chosen to celebrate his wife turning thirty, and together with that the beginning of a new age, the founding of a new party, his own upcoming fortieth birthday looming ahead: a whole new decade that neither of them had ever really though they'd see. New cars and new trends and new ways of life and that same old feeling, of being weary, of youth left somewhere at the turn of the century.

Smile, she'd told him. Smile for the guests. Because even if we know it, we can keep it hidden from them just for a little while. Smile for me, because it's my birthday, if you want another reason; smile and I won't ask for anything for a little while.  
Gone were the days of celebrating with a bottle of whiskey and a cold night by the river, which was something he’d done, once, ten years ago, when she’d turned twenty, and God help the man who thinks it’s a good idea to celebrate a whore’s birthday.

God help the two of them now, because those two people were long gone, and even if they tried, even if they went to the river right now, the earth would feel uncomfortable underneath their fancy clothes, the night too cold even in the middle of spring, the ground too rough underneath their battered bodies. Because now their bodies were catching up, and they were getting older; Tommy even more so than her.

So they'd had to find a way.

Lizzie had always been into ballet, as much as someone with her upbringing could be into ballet. She’d never touched one of those bars dancers held to stretch their long legs; she’d never walked on those shiny wooden floors, wearing loose skirts and those pointy shoes. But she’d always pictured herself as a dancer - maybe it was her height, her neck and arms and legs, the way she’d always been _longer_ than other girls her age. It’s frowned upon for a girl, but it would have made her a good dancer, she was sure.

She’d thought about going to the theatre, to see a ballet, maybe, to celebrate, have her husband give her the tickets, wrapped in a ribbon - Tommy didn’t hate it, and even if he had, one night at the theatre would have been a small sacrifice.

Tommy had called the whole company instead.

She’d had the show inside her own house. And contrary to popular belief, it had been Tommy’s idea.

(That it wasn’t all that had happened, that her birthday had only been one of the reasons, the pretext - Lizzie believed she was aware enough. She’d also discovered that there’s no use in remembering some things.)

So the fact that Mosley had had to be invited, well, that had been a small sacrifice. Among so many people, she’d told herself, Tommy had told her, it would have been easy to avoid his gaze, to reply with icy but polite words to his allusions. And the others, they were too scared; they wouldn't have laughed along, not at her, not in her house.

She’d underestimated, and then overestimated herself; and she’d been left shaking, and scared, with a fear she could not discuss, because nothing had happened.

(Not yet.)

And Lizzie could never figure out - with all of her jonhs, or at least the wealthiest ones, if she’d ever had a truly wealthy john in Small Heath - just how much could people really ignore about those men; if they really didn’t know, didn’t imagine, how they panted like pigs while fucking her. It was true, that everyone panted like a pig, that panting like a pig is after all only human nature; but Mosley's cries were so much worse than the others', and all of theirs were worse than Tommy's, or John's, or Angel's.

(Mosley was considered charming, instead: people listened, women listened, and turned their heads to the side, when he spoke, and he spoke as if he held some truth others weren’t privy to.

And sometimes they looked, as well. The women did; men who were into men like Mosley, they were too scared to do it. There’s a look you have to give a man, and she had seen one of those looks.

Mosley had looked back.)

She was thinking about deep brown eyes, when the phone rang again.

Lizzie had learned to expect big things every time it did; like a dog who’s learned the words for ‘food’, or ‘outside’, and starts wagging its tail every time someone speaks them (Cyril did that a lot).

The phone meant news, the phone meant developments; the phone had rung on the night of the barley field.

She happened to be near it when it rang, so she replied. It was a voice she didn’t recognize immediately - a woman’s voice, panicked.

This is it, she thought - this is trouble. This is Tommy’s lover calling because he broke up with her. This is the Jew, again, calling to say he’s dying in a ditch and he has a cryptic message for me to deliver to my husband. This is the relative of some poor soul who’s been murdered last night, and it happened because of the Peaky Blinders. This is the side of his job he doesn’t like to disclose, but still comes through when it’s dark outside, and warm inside from our breaths. Even though it was sunny, it was spring and it was a nice afternoon, good for a walk on the premises.

Then she recognized the voice. She’d heard it before, though she didn’t remember the name of the person it was attached to.

Said person was a maid with the blondest hair she’d ever seen, Ada’s maid in London: the maid she often denied she had, but Lizzie knew she had one - and she needed it, more than ever, pregnant with a dead man’s child, Karl away to boarding school most days.

«Mrs Shelby?» she was asking.

«Yes,» Lizzie replied.

«Her waters have broken,» the woman said.

«We’re on our way,» Lizzie said.

Then she realized that they hadn’t actually agreed to assist Ada during the birth - they’d never explicitly discussed her pregnancy at all. Tommy had given her just enough information about the father’s identity, without a hint of judgement, or any other emotion other than grief. Then he’d said nothing else about it.

Maybe for Tommy that was all that needed to be said, though she could tell he’d cared about his sister’s pregnancy dearly; maybe he, too, had been traumatized by Ruby’s birth.

She closed the call, took a deep breath, then walked upstairs, wondering whether running would have been too dramatic. London was hours away, and during those hours Ada was in the hands of God; and even if they had happened to be already there, a door away, or even in the room with her - Lizzie didn’t know exactly what they could have done for her. Reassure her, she supposed. That hadn't helped her much.

She’d only really known how scary childbirth was when she’d had to go through it herself.

She found Tommy in their room, lying on the bed, fully clothed and handsome, the distinctive smell of a recently smoked cigarette filling the room. It was rare for him to be home in the middle of the afternoon, which was a small miracle, she thought, and she remembered him mentioning that he had to work in the evening. She supposed he didn’t now.

«Ada,» she just said, realized she hadn’t quite run, but almost.

He was upright in a second.

«Is she alright?» he asked, putting on his jacket, which was within arm’s reach, on the back of a chair; he hadn’t even removed his shoes.

«The maid didn’t say,» Lizzie replied, as they walked together to the car.

The car was ready, since Tommy was already planning to leave again. Lizzie climbed into the passenger seat.

«I thought it would take longer,» she said. «I was hoping she’d be born on your day. Would have been good luck,» Lizzie told him as he ignited.

«Don’t think so,» he replied, cigarette between his lips, almost inaudibly, but she knew how to listen.

Afterwards they fell into another one of their companionable silences. She liked car rides with him. They weren’t the most common occurrence - his work schedule meant she often had to rely on chauffeurs. Maybe one day she’d be able to drive, too. When he did drive her, it was usually because they were going somewhere together, only the two of them. Theatre, or London, a few times, back when she’d been his secretary whom he sometimes fucked.

Or he’d drive her to the river, with just a bottle and their naked bodies, newly bound in marriage but shaped around each other.

He broke the silence, sometimes, asking for her lighter, since he’d forgotten his on the table in their room. Lizzie had told him to be careful when he was smoking on the bed, because she kept finding ash in the bedding.

«Karl was born feet first,» he said at some point.

«Hopefully this one won’t,» Lizzie replied.

The world outside was grey, then green, then grey again; they were in London.

They found the house soon, and parked. Tommy didn’t need maps. Once he’d traveled to one place, he would have been able to find it again, no matter how many years later; it was a skill Lizzie envied.

The maid welcomed them and lead them to Ada’s room without pleasantries. The doctor had already arrived, she told them, and they could hear his voice through the heavy wooden door. He had an old man’s voice, like all doctors, in Lizzie’s mind. There were old doctors, and then the old ladies who operated in poorly lit alleys. Lizzie had always thought that for people like her, God had created the latter. But for Ada, she couldn’t imagine anything else.

Tommy was about to go in when he stopped on his feet and turned around, looking at her, almost expectantly. Lizzie had meant to wait outside, and the unspoken invitation made her heart warmer. Maybe Tommy wanted her by his side, for his own sake, or maybe he thought she’d know more than him on the subject of childbirth, having been through the experience herself.

That same experience, in Lizzie’s eyes, disqualified her from being near a pregnant woman for the rest of her life; Lizzie had come to the conclusion that she was simply bad at childbearing. She felt like she was bad at a lot of womanly things.

Ada was on the bed, moaning.

«She’s almost there,» the doctor said. There was nobody else in the room. And then it struck her, and reminded her of herself, four years ago. But Tommy had come, in the end. He’d come. Right when she'd been about to run out of breadcrumbs, of blood and of everything else - he'd thrown her the entire loaf. Ben Younger couldn’t go anywhere, even though she was sure he would have been by her side, because Ben Younger was dead.

It hit her, that Ada, too, was alone. Wondering whether it really was a common fate for the Shelbies.

Looking at her face, distorted by pain, Lizzie realized that time hadn’t only passed for them. She looked old, older than she remembered her.

Ada was older than Lizzie, by a whole six years - enough for Lizzie to remember Ada Shelby as someone she’d admired, a teen when she’d been just a child, short haired and wild and just as reckless as the boys. Then, when she’d become a Communist, when she’d dated Freddie Thorne - Ada Shelby had been a myth, in Lizzie’s eyes.

First she’d envied her family, how they were all both above and below the law, at all times.

Then, she’d still envied her family, but for many different reasons.

After the war, Lizzie had felt like the years had passed differently for her than from most of the girls she remembered from Small Heath. She’d aged ten, twenty years in just four. She’d developed lines around her mouth and an additional layer of something on her skin, something thick, and unfeeling, and rough.

Tommy treated Ada like she was still a child - he knew she was older than Lizzie, but maybe he didn’t realize. He'd never treated Lizzie like a child, and she wouldn't have let him.

Ada was older, now, though, far from a child, older than she had been when she’d given birth to Karl. And maybe that played a part, because Lizzie knew that the older the mother was, the more dangerous the delivery, even though she’d never planned to become that old herself.

Tommy was sitting by the bed, holding her hand. Lizzie was standing at the foot of that same bed, feeling like a statue, unable to move in any direction, almost stuck.

The doctor was silent now - Tommy had taken on the job of comforting his sister. He was whispering something to her, something Lizzie couldn’t quite understand, in English and Romani; and even though Lizzie had learned enough Romani, through the years, there was a layer of something between her eardrums and the outside world, which reminded her of the sea. The way she’d heard Jo scream when she’d put her head underwater, without even being able to swim - she still hadn’t learned. Underwater, everything looked blurry, and very bright. She'd seen that place again, many years later, just as blurry and just as bright, the air dirty, like the air that comes with mansions, specks of dust and waves of light.

«Liz,» Tommy said at some point, expectantly. She still hadn’t moved. He’d raised his head from Ada’s body, at some point, to look at her. The doctor sometimes checked on Ada, but Lizzie could tell the time hadn’t come yet.

She managed to become unstuck, somehow; she walked closer to the bed, saw that both chairs were occupied by the two men, so she found herself crouching awkwardly over the body of her sister-in-law, feeling helpless and more than a bit afraid.

She hadn’t been so afraid during her own. She hadn’t felt much, or if she had, she didn’t recall. She only recalled the sea.

«Ada,» she tried. «You’ve done this once. It’s going to be alright.»

She’d done it with Pol, the first time. Maybe that made her afraid - that there wasn’t a woman like Pol by her side, just useless Lizzie, and a male doctor. Once upon a time, old women like Pol assisted mothers, but now, if you were as rich as the Shelbies were now, as she had been at the time of Ruby’s birth, you needed to have a doctor; it would have been insane not to have one. And still, Lizzie knew she didn't trust them completely. Lizzie knew they couldn't really understand.

Then Ada screamed, and the light went out in Lizzie’s head. It had happened a few times, the very few times a john had become truly violent. The lights had gone out, all but one, and the only one left was the one that had saved her foremothers when they’d been hunting, crawling on the forest floor, when the bears had arrived; that light had come all the way down to her, unchanged, the same reaction to a different threat.

She was outside the room now, where the maid had first taken them. Tommy hadn’t followed her. His place was by her side, she gathered, and there was nothing he could do for her now. Maybe, if she was really lucky, he’d just understood.

Maybe he thought it was his time to make things right, since they’d both agreed there wouldn’t be a next time for them - even though he’d grown up in such a large family, and Lizzie could picture him with a few more children, if only he didn’t have his job, if only he didn’t have his mind, if only, if only, if only.

But Lizzie had sworn, never more, and Tommy respected some choices, sometimes.

Tommy had respected her choice to keep Ruby - no matter how foolish, and ill advised. He had never questioned her reasons for keeping her, either.

To bind the two of them together, to have her own family, because another abortion could have killed her and they all knew that. Tommy knew that and Polly knew that and Arthur knew that and no one had said a thing.

Because she’d hoped for a Jo, because she’d hoped for a marriage, because she’d hoped for unconditional love from a creature and she’d wanted to see whether the things they said about that - were they true? Would they apply to her?

He’d bought her the house; he’d been respectable.

He hadn’t proposed at first.

He’d done nothing at all, at first. He’d gone away. On a holiday.

And every time she’d asked Polly about it, she’d replied the way she replied when she was talking about dreams, or ghosts, or other things Lizzie didn’t really believe in, and maybe neither did Polly, because what she said seldom made sense. But Tommy wasn’t a ghost, he wasn’t a dream; he was flesh and blood and Lizzie had the proof, right inside of her.

She’d let herself imagine - his hands on her stretched stomach, caressing it and then her face. But he’d never even seen her pregnant.

He’d never even seen her pregnant, until the very end; when the doctor had arrived and he’d told her that the time had come. And Lizzie had found herself unable to pretend, not anymore, that the father was away for work, that he would be home before dark, because it was already dark and it was clear that he wouldn’t have come. Polly had come instead, jealous of the ancient art of childbirth, hostile towards the old doctor, who looked stern but Lizzie _knew_ \- she’d seen pity in his eyes, at one point.

She’d never really thought about childbirth before that day; she’d assumed that it had to be unpleasant, and she knew she couldn’t know how much until the moment came. She’d been mostly fine with it.

I’ve been through worse, she’d thought, though it had been way too long since her last abortion, since the pain of metal touching her body in places that were never meant to be touched. She lived in a fancy house now, and such things belonged to the past.

And yet, they'd never left her, and as she’d felt herself fade away, into that sea of light, she’d thought, how foolish - how foolish of me to think that some things can truly be left behind.

From then, she only had glimpses.

She remembered some words the doctor had said. She remembered Polly looking at her with those eyes, and she’d thought, this is how she looks at ghosts; I am a ghost now, or soon I will be. Something had gone wrong with her blood pressure, or she’d lost too much blood, or something else, maybe he’d told her but she’d decided to forget. That would have been deadly, most likely, hadn’t she lived in the mansion, hadn’t Tommy given her the sum he’d given her.

And then she remembered Tommy himself, coming through the door, and how sorry a sight she must have been, the only time Tommy had truly seen her pregnant. Legs spread open, lifeless and pale, and she’d also cried and screamed, she was unsure. Maybe it had been a few minutes, maybe it had been several hours; most likely something in between.

He’d sat behind her back, arms on her sides, and he hadn’t moved once.

She’d faded in and out of that sea for a couple of days, afterwards, while Polly took care of the baby. She remembered the light - an ocean of light with those specks of dust, every time she’d opened her eyes, and Ruby’s cries and the silent man sitting on a chair by the bed, in the bedroom she’d occupied during her pregnancy. She was going to move out of that house soon, though she couldn't really know that yet. She only knew Ruby has strong lungs, and that he was there. He was a dark figure, stark against all that light.

There were similar cries now, muffled, though the heavy wood of the door, and a similar light, though the season wasn’t the same. At some point, the dark figure was sitting beside her, like then.

«It’s a girl,» he just told her, but Lizzie already knew.

«I think I know,» Lizzie said, after a while, «what Mosley meant, when he said he’d already done this to you.»

«You do?» he asked, letting the ash drop on the floor. Lizzie realized that it had nothing to do with the baby girl’s birth, with Ada or with anything else. She knew Tommy knew that she didn’t want to talk about it.

«I think I figured it out,» she repeated, careful, knowing he was searching for a way to twist the words she hadn’t even said yet, «earlier, before the maid called.»

He nodded.

«Gina,» she said, then inhaled.

He raised his head just slightly, apparently looking at the air in front of him. He was pondering, she figured, he did it often on the office, after meetings or phone calls. Weighing the options, considering the offer.

«It crossed your mind already?»

«I don’t trust her,» he replied.

She nodded. He was emotional, but calculating at heart; she knew he’d been giving the American girl the benefit of the doubt. It if had crossed his mind, he must have thought it was his hostility towards her emerging, as it already had, and that had scared Lizzie, when she'd been told. Tommy relied on instinct, but he was not a fool; when he’d had to close his eyes and pinch his nose shut, before embarking on a deal, he’d done it. Maybe he’d grown accustomed to pinching his nose shut, to keep out the bad smell. Lizzie knew he didn’t only do it on the job.

Which was why it must have been scary, to see him threaten Gina Shelby and her unborn child, if Finn's tales were true. It would have scared Lizzie.

She had nothing against Gina Shelby, strictly speaking. She wouldn’t have liked her if they’d been working together ten years ago. But now, she didn’t see how it was any of her business.

«I saw the way they were looking at each other,» she said, hoping it made a plausible explanation, «at my birthday.»

He nodded.

«Do you want to make sure?» Lizzie asked.

He took the last drag, then dropped the cigarette and stepped on it heavily, crushing it with his heel.

«We have a baptism!» he shouted in the end, to the empty London hallway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soo here it is. Sorry again. Not really satisfied with this one but I need to put it out to be able to go on with the entire thing.  
> Ada is finally not pregnant anymore. I always found the part where Polly tells Tommy that he's never come to see Lizzie while she was pregnant... depressing.
> 
> So yes, I guess the entire family will be invited to the baptism, and that includes Michael and Gina. Just a warning - I find Michael's storyline more than a bit boring and I don't think great things will happen, however I have a specific storyline in mind for the two of them that might be triggering for some. I'll tag is as such if I go through with it!


	13. To children (Part I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Lizzie sometimes let herself wonder - what if another world was possible? She was used to thinking in possibilities and strategies and ways to acquire the things she could reasonably acquire in this world; the rest was pointless and she’d trained herself not to wish for it in the first place._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not crazy late this time! Baby Elizabeth is finally here.  
> Massive thanks to everyone who commented, this story is helping me stay sane like a lot.

Polly had wanted Michael at the baptism.

Lizzie could tell that Tommy had not; it was clear in his eyes and in the way he told Ada he’d be coming, on the phone. Tommy was clearly against it, but Aunt Pol had wanted it, and in spite of everything she still held some of that power she’d once had over the boys.

They were not boys anymore. 

Even little Finn was married; Arthur was starting to look old, with graying hair and his already thin frame shrinking even smaller, and not the good kind of old, either, like he’d been packing up the years like some of the rich wives had packed up the weight after hiring a new cook; Tommy’s fortieth was approaching fast, and Lizzie was getting antsy at the thought.

Lizzie thought the baptism could make a good rehearsal. Tommy had set the bar high, when he’d called a ballet company to their home for Lizzie’s thirtieth. Tommy’s fortieth required proper celebrations, and gone were the days of a night at the pub, until the boys could no longer walk straight the hundred or so yards to their home. Gone were the days of blonde barmaids and young loves.

They’d invite London’s finest, perhaps, let them mingle among the Gypsies at Arrow House. Tommy’s first wedding had been something similar, and it had gone well, all things considered. Tommy had nipped any attempt at rebellion in the bud.

It was not the only thing Tommy had nipped in the bud, at the time, but Lizzie didn’t think much about Angel these days, sometimes not at all. Unlike Grace, he wasn’t _there_ , at Arrow House, or anywhere else Lizzie went. Maybe because they hadn’t loved each other the way Tommy and Grace had, because they hadn’t had the time; Lizzie couldn’t rule that out, though she remembered thinking that she had found the man of her life. Or maybe only because she wasn’t Tommy, Lizzie didn’t know.

There were no such problems now, and the Shelbies had grown more accustomed to social occasions, after so many years of practice. There would be nothing left to nip in the bud in the first place. Or so she’d thought, before Tommy muttered the thing about Michael.

Still, Lizzie was fine with the idea of the baptism. The rehearsal.

She wore a light dress on the day of the baptism, because births were joyful occasions, and the season had come; it felt like Finn’s wedding, in a lot of ways, but even the last winds of winter had died down, and if you paid attention to the air you could see the signs of summer: it was in the stains of sweat on the gentlemen’s suits, under the armpits, in the white fabric hanging everywhere inside the church.

Polly had also wanted the baby to be baptized in Birmingham, where the rest of them had been baptized and Lizzie, too, maybe, there in Small Heath, she saw no reason why not, but she’d never asked anyone - she didn’t know who to ask to find out.

She sat near the front row for the ceremony, next to her husband; the children were with them, nearby, all dressed up in their tiny clothes. Charlie was not so tiny anymore, but Ruby still was, and sometimes Lizzie thought about how fast they grew up and how it hurt her a little, to think that one day she would be too big to hold.

At some point, her mother had held her for the last time, and Jo, as well, before they’d grown too big - her mother had been a small woman too, much shorter than Lizzie was now. The height came from the man she’d barely known as her father.

Baby Elizabeth would be small for quite some time; she was drowning in white lace and organza, held by Ada near the altar. She had a white ring of fabric around her head, which was still sparsely covered by tiny dark hair. She knew that she would be dark, darker than the rest of them, courtesy of the man she’d never know as her father, and Lizzie believed this was a huge loss, perhaps one of the biggest the family had ever had to face. She’d always thought that Ben Younger was a good man, and that Tommy respected him, and Tommy knew how to tell who to respect. Hopefully there would be copious amounts of Ben Younger, in the baby Ada was holding near the altar, her brown skin drowning in the organza. She thought it was organza, at least; secretly she was wondering why Polly had insisted so much on her name.

When she’d picked Ruby’s, Lizzie had been fine with it. She hadn’t really wanted to think about a name, not without Tommy to pick it together with her. Tommy would have followed Polly’s advice, anyway. She didn’t know how Charlie’s name had come to be, but she strongly suspected it had been Grace’s will, and she was fine with it, because it was a good name. Ruby reminded her of the stone, and she’d always found it oddly fitting. She’d never really dwelled on the subject of names, Lizzie.

(Jo’s full name had been Joanna. Joanna, Joanna, Joanna, she’d once tried to call her, caressing her stomach. It hadn’t sounded bad, but when Pol had said, Ruby, Lizzie had started calling her Ruby, and soon afterwards it had been too late to call her anything else.)

Lizzie was an Elizabeth, even though she’d almost never been called by that name. Polly was an Elizabeth too, and countless many others, an army of Elizabeths roaming the land. And today, there was one more.

Lizzie was almost sure that Polly had wanted the baby to be named after herself.

Once the priest was done talking, Tommy leaned against her, lips close to her ear. Lizzie knew he was going to point to someone else inside the church, to whisper his or her name. She suspected Michael. She hadn’t really paid attention to the rest of the people in attendance - partly because they’d arrived slightly late, due to the heavy traffic, and partly because she’d allowed it to herself, to rest, like a soldier before the battle, she imagined.

«Maggie,» he said, to her surprise. Lizzie tried to be as discreet as possible as she turned her head to look for the girl. And there she was, by Finn’s side, and they didn’t look like a married couple, they looked like children dressing up as one, baby faces mounted precariously over their parent’s good clothes.

«You said she was close to Gina,» Tommy told her.

‘Close’ wasn’t the word Lizzie would have used. Maggie had tried to make friends, when she’d first arrived into the family, with a naiveté Lizzie had pitied. She’d found someone willing to listen in Gina, but Lizzie could tell that Gina wasn’t a listener. She could see Gina speak over Maggie, because she was older, and American, and because she felt entitled, as the matriarch’s daughter-in-law; whereas Maggie had only had in sort the youngest sibling, too young to truly be a part of it.

However, Maggie didn’t seem stupid; Lizzie couldn’t see the two of them become friends, not on those premises. She didn’t nod, but she didn’t contradict Tommy, not yet.

«Ask her,» Tommy told her, «about Mosley.»

She hadn’t expected him to be so straightforward. That would have implied telling the girl about too many things for Lizzie’s liking.

«You trust her so much?»

«She came here to tell us who aided Mosley,» he said.

«That didn’t work,» Lizzie replied.

He took it in, said nothing for some time while everyone stood up and began congratulating.

«She can be trusted,» he said in the end, high enough for others to hear, because they wouldn’t have understood, anyway.

She’d assumed that the deal with the girl had fallen through.

Or maybe it hadn’t - maybe it was normal, maybe it was supposed to be that way, to take some time. Lizzie liked to read now, and she’d read quite a few adventure books. Everything happened so fast in them, entire plots spanning over just a few days. The authors only told her about the exciting parts; as soon as problems arose, they were already being solved, and everything else was omitted.

She’d also read that in the past, in ancient times, armies would only fight during the summer, and during the winter they would retreat to their camps. There they must have lived for months, missing their families, cooking their food, sharpening their swords, maybe training for battle, pretending to fight against each other. She’d never understood why the opposing armies had never taken advantage of the winter months, to strike when the enemy least expected it.

She would have preferred it, if the family business had been more like an adventure novel, and less like an ancient, never ending war. Because way too often Warwickshire felt like those ancient winters, spent in a foreign land, waiting in a tent, sharpening your sword, staring at the sky every morning for the first signs of summer.

Because summer might mean victory, or defeat, or even death; even that’s better than waiting.

«Maggie,» Lizzie greeted her, as soon as she could locate her among the crowd inside the cramped church.

She looked lost, and she smiled when she saw Lizzie. Lizzie couldn’t help but feel a bit motherly, when she saw the girl. Maybe it was her size, or the fact that she knew that she was fresh out of school.

She was wearing pink, which didn’t help; her hair was tied into a complicated knot. She had very long hair, that Lizzie had always thought looked old fashioned, or childish. It must have been impractical, in day to day life, even though the girl looked like she did nothing all day, and it made her look even younger.

«How are things at Arrow House?» Maggie asked.

«Fine,» Lizzie replied, automatically. «I was wondering whether you and Gina were still getting along,» she continued, not really seeing the point of pleasantries, not at this point.

Maggie looked taken aback, but it only lasted for a moment. Lizzie could tell she’d wanted to reach out - and that she knew Lizzie was only drawing her in, into yet another scheme.

«I don’t think one could say we ever really got along,» she replied.

Lizzie thought she already knew that. «But I know you’ve been seeing each other,» she insisted.

«Sometimes,» the other girl replied. «The only thing we have in common is age, really.»

«Did she ever tell you about a man?» Lizzie asked.

Maybe it would work - to frame it as mere gossip, to use the girl’s dislike for Gina Shelby as leverage. Is Gina cheating on Michael, it sounded like she’d just asked, just another Birmingham scandal.

Maggie’s mouth contorted, and Lizzie knew she’d done it.

«I don’t know what you’re planning to do with this information,» she said, «or what Tommy is planning to do.»

Please tell me, Lizzie wanted to say. Just tell me, and I’m willing to talk with you about anything else. About life. I want to tell you all the secrets, the ones I’ve learned, at least, so you won’t have to feel like a fish out of water anymore.

Even though she must have been feeling comfortable enough, having grown up in high society. Lizzie had never grown up among the rich, but she felt at ease, perhaps more so than the girl. Maggie had read way more than Lizzie, she was more knowledgeable about the topics of conversation, but Lizzie had learned to master the art of conversation itself.

«She mentioned a man,» Maggie said in the end, «a few times, but she didn’t say his name. Said he was older, and that I probably wouldn’t know who he was, but he was famous. I don’t think she knows who I am,» she added, almost as an afterthought.

Then it hit Lizzie that Maggie had always been someone, by virtue of her maiden name, by virtue of her wealth and her father, and she thought, of course. She thought that maybe Maggie had more to teach than Lizzie could offer, but then again, in spite of her heritage, she was a fish out of water there. Or maybe that was exactly why.

«How is Tommy?» Maggie asked afterwards.

That took Lizzie off guard.

«Fine,» she said, «busy.»

«I can believe that,» she replied. «He’s been running the company all by himself,» she said, with just a small movement of her head made it clear who she was referring to - to Michael busy greeting Arthur on the other side of the aisle.

Afterwards they all walked to the restaurant that Tommy had specifically reserved for the baptism. Ada first, holding the bundle, newly welcomed into the Christian faith, who was crying and shaking her little fists. Lizzie only allowed herself to look at her briefly, then turned to look at Ruby by her side, holding her hand tighter.

Charlie was walking behind them, fiercely independent, chin high - still at the age where family gatherings are a solemn occasion, not a joyful one.

(To be fair, they were also past the age where such occasions were joyful ones. At some point that had changed - maybe when they’d made money, or maybe it had always been that way, and Lizzie had never been involved deeply enough to see it herself.)

Inside the venue, they didn’t sit, everyone roaming the room instead, like at the inaugurations of the children’s homes Lizzie had partaken in, which had felt like such a big honor then.

When Tommy finally joined her, after some kind of talk with Arthur during which he had to cup his brother’s nape more than once - about Linda, or the business, or something else Lizzie wasn’t privy to and didn’t really care about - she knew the time had come to face his cousin, and she straightened her back even higher, handing Ruby off to a maid nearby.

«There was a man,» she whispered to her husband, and knew he’d understood, even though he showed no signs of it as they walked towards the young couple.

Gina was impeccable, as she’d always been. Being pregnant, and heavily so, didn’t seem to stop her. Lizzie remembered the way she’d felt, how large her ankles had become and how much walking had felt like a boat trying to make its way through a too narrow canal; wondered how much pain Gina must have been in right now.

Michael smiled at them, but the smile was tense.

«I finished the job you gave me,» he said.

«Good,» Tommy replied, skipping pleasantries altogether. _He’s been running the company all by himself_ , Maggie had said.

Lizzie remembered the way he’d taken everything with him, when they’d run away to be with the Gypsies, after the night of the barley field.

 _Ever since?_ she wanted to ask, but she couldn’t, not with them right in front of them.

«I’ll contact you, should need arise,» Tommy was saying, perfectly polite and glacial all at the same time.

«I have been following your political career with interest, Mr Shelby,» Gina interrupted Michael, who was about to say something else. Something about the business, Lizzie could tell; Gina must have been fed up of hearing about the business. This is just the beginning, Lizzie thought. You’ve seen nothing yet.

«Thank you,» Tommy replied, still glacial.

«I really appreciate Mr Mosley and his ideas, and wish we had something similar in my home country, as well,» she added, and Lizzie was reminded of a snake, thin and agile and slick enough to fit into any crevice it could find.

«I’ll tell him,» Tommy replied, less rigid, this time, as if that had piqued his interest. So much, anyone could tell; but only Lizzie knew why.

«Also, congratulations,» Lizzie added, looking at Gina, at her swollen stomach, sensing that even that part of the conversation had been performed, and that there was nothing left to say about the topic. «Seems like there’s another one on the way!»

Gina smiled, but Lizzie could tell it was not genuine. «Girl or boy?» Lizzie asked.

«Polly said it’s going to be a boy,» Gina replied, chin high, perhaps because she knew Lizzie hadn’t accomplished that feat, or maybe not, maybe she just really was like that.

And she had reasons, to be proud and protective of the child she was carrying. She’d been told that Tommy had threatened that child - that Tommy had threatened Michael through that child. And maybe he hadn’t meant that - maybe he’d threatened not to acknowledge him, or her, or that he wouldn’t be accepting Gina into the family, but still, he’d threatened the child.

(Funny way to threaten a man, a voice was saying, inside Lizzie’s head, if the child is not even his.

Then she didn’t allow it to continue.)

When Polly had told her, it had scared Lizzie. Polly had been angered, because that child, as far as she knew, was going to be her first and quite possibly only grandchild. Lizzie hadn’t cared so much about the child itself; Lizzie had been scared of Tommy.

Because Tommy had always been kind to children. He’d never made a big deal out of them, but he’d been kind to them, and touched by them, like the time young Peter had died alongside Ben Younger when the bomb had gone off in his car.

Tommy had never seen Peter, except for a couple of seconds, during which he’d seen him play football with his friends on the street, maybe bothering those who were driving by.

He’d never seen Peter take his first steps, utter his first word, drink milk from his mother and learn how to kick a ball, he’d never seen him struggle to learn to read and write and he’d never seen him laugh with his friends. But he, and Lizzie - they knew he’d done all these things at some point, with reasonable certainty, and they knew he had nothing to do with the Peaky Blinders and had most likely never even heard of them in his young life, but that hadn’t saved him from the blast.

Lizzie knew Tommy had gone to his funeral, hiding in the back, had seen his mother cry, even though she’d warned him to keep quiet, hide his face, stay away from the crowd. In case someone recognized him.

And Tommy hadn’t argued with that.

Meanwhile, the conversation was over; Gina had been congratulated over her pregnancy. Seems like we’ll have another baptism soon, Lizzie could have said, but she’d felt it was unwise to mention that they would have been forced to share a room once again in the foreseeable future; everyone seemed to be distressed enough as it was.

There were no more reasons to be distressed, she thought, looking around, seeing all the familiar faces and a few more she didn’t recognize, but they looked innocuous enough: mostly women from Ada’s life in London, from the library, from her clubs, most of them with young children and husbands, none of them alone like Ada and sometimes it showed. In their eyes, filled with worry and sometimes pity.

They didn’t know the Shelbies, they didn’t know everything that stood behind Ada; that she wasn’t going to walk the street completely alone. But still, she was a single mother, to a black child, and that was something Lizzie couldn’t quite fathom right now. It hit her then, once Michael Shelby had been neutralized, once she allowed herself to look at the children all around them.

Not just the Londoners, only a handful of which had managed to catch the train to Birmingham to attend. There were some faces she recognized from high society. And she wasn’t used to seeing so many children all at once, each one of them a reminder that Ruby was unlike them, in ways Lizzie couldn’t quite understand. But she was. Not visibly, like little Elizabeth was going to be, and Lizzie prayed that Ada would be a better mother than she was, that she would be there to protect her daughter along the way. Because little Elizabeth would need it, and Ruby needed it, and every one of them did, maybe, every last one of them a miracle, that they were still alive and breathing.

The children were running, and laughing, and talking to their parents and clinging to their skirts, and — 

Lizzie sometimes let herself wonder - what if another world was possible? She was used to thinking in possibilities and strategies and ways to acquire the things she could reasonably acquire in this world; the rest was pointless and she’d trained herself not to wish for it in the first place.

But sometimes, rarely, she allowed herself to do it, to change the plans of the world as God had intended it; she allowed herself to imagine a world where the most basic causes and effects were separated from each other, where she’d never needed to sleep with strange men in order to eat, a world in which the farmer grew her food and gave it to her for free and in return she gave her body to him because she wanted to.

A world in which little Elizabeth wouldn’t need an explanation, upon walking into a room for the first time; where Ruby would never have to fold herself into strange shapes in order to fit through the doors of life, but where those same doors could be molded around her little body like a mother’s hug, and hold her like she and Tommy had, the troubled night of her birth.

A world in which people who were different were seen with interest because it’s good to learn something new; a world through a child’s eyes, she’d thought, once upon a time, but then she’d met the children, the ruthless creatures born from her fellow high society wives. Even children like Karl, born from a Gypsy and a factory worker, and Lizzie often wondered what his adult life was shaping up to be, and how he would cope with that. How they all would cope.

(If the children really were the future, Lizzie wasn’t so relieved.)

Afterwards it began to rain.

The sky had been terse early on, during the function, but Lizzie knew the skies of England could be unreliable, knew that the rain was always just behind the corner. Had learned to like it, as well, now that she always had a reliable roof, be it that of a house, or a car, or a club.

The guests started leaving, the Londoners back to London, the children in tow, explaining that they couldn’t get home too late. The journey was long. Ada said goodbye to them all graciously, the bundle temporarily in the arms of a maid.

She went to Lizzie, when they’d all left.

«Congratulations,» Lizzie said again, then raised a hand, trying to catch Elizabeth’s tiny fingers; they curled around her index like a glove. Ruby had done that as well, once upon a time.

«She’s beautiful,» she said. She didn’t know what else to say. She thought she understood, but at the same time she knew she didn’t understand fully, and she never would.

«I like that she’s named after you, you know,» Ada said.

She was cradling Elizabeth now, looking at her fondly. Her dress was simple, its colors somber; anything else would have been inappropriate, because after all, she was still mourning. «I think you’ve been very good for him,» she said in the end.

It began raining harder, by the time the Londoners must have been on their trains. Lizzie was starting to feel anxious about the journey back home. Warwickshire was far, farther away than anyone else’s house, and she knew Tommy didn’t have issues with driving in the dark, with this weather, but it made her feel uneasy, like she had felt when cars had still been new and few and far between customers had started picking her up with theirs. Like cars weren’t really reliable, like they were magical artifacts that could not be trusted. Or, they could have been trusted, had they been alone: but the children were with them.

«Our house is the closest,» Finn said, in the end, «and we need a ride back, anyway.»

He looked embarrassed, even though his had been merely an offer, and it was up to Tommy whether to accept it or gracefully decline.

Their house was new: they’d bought it after the wedding, far enough from Warwickshire but pretty close to Birmingham and easy to reach from Small Heath. Lizzie knew Finn had been reluctant to get too far, out of fear of being singled out by the brothers, or out of nostalgia for his strange childhood, Lizzie didn’t know.

Then Tommy nodded; Lizzie could tell in his eyes he was feeling weary. He must have been feeling very weary, if he was accepting to sleep in a guest room. Lizzie was reminded of the talk he’d had with Arthur, when he’d cupped his brother’s nape like that.

Finn and Maggie got in the car with Michael and Gina; Lizzie walked alongside her husband to theirs, a child in each hand. She didn’t bother covering her head, and neither did he, as the rain grew harder and harder, and she thought the soldiers of Ancient Greece must have felt a little like this.

She hoped that they could at least believe in their wars, though - because it was a lot of rain, a lot of waiting, a lot of cold, sleepless nights, for a war you couldn’t even fully believe in. So much that sometimes even she felt like giving up, and she thought she still believed in their war, though sometimes even that belief faltered.

Somehow, she'd had this idea - that the soldiers fought for the sake of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, the weather, a trope as old as time.
> 
> I guess we're near the end, this is by far the longest thing I've ever written and I loved every step of it - and the reviews I got!


	14. To children (Part II)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He’d stopped seeing her face, he’d stopped hearing her voice clearly. It was as if she was leaving the words directly inside his mind, dropping them off like a suitcase full of money in an alley. The voice he’d once loved was gone, and so was the face, and if he tried, he could no longer remember what Grace had looked like, though he could have described her, using words, without even a second thought._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big, big content warning for miscarriage and discrimination/antiziganism. Proceed with caution.
> 
> I’ve been very mean to the family in this chapter… also it ended up being the longest chapter so far, somehow! Maybe I am just sadistic...

«How’s Arthur?» Lizzie asked him, inside the car. She hadn’t really paid attention to her brother-in-law during the baptism. The children were in the backseat, asleep, one on top of the other. Siblings, like Tommy and Arthur; and may they never turn out like them.

«Good,» Tommy replied.

«Told you something bad?» she insisted.

The way to Finn’s new house was straightforward enough, but the rain drowned the streetlights, and Lizzie had to raise her voice to make herself heard without waking up the sleeping children behind her.

Tommy took another drag, then threw the cigarette, now spent, in the ashtray he’d had installed inside the car. «Yes,» he replied.

He sounded tired. It always scared Lizzie, when he did.

Lizzie could feel her legs turn into jelly, then stopped to think - was it time to get anxious, or maybe not yet. May it be Linda, she found herself hoping, because anything concerning Linda, she thought she could take.

Linda was in the past, mostly, if not for Arthur, for the rest of them. Linda was with someone else now, and they were somewhere else, on a faraway island, where she didn’t have to be afraid anymore. Even though she knew that she should have despised her, Lizzie was sort of happy for her.

They’d been the same, at some point, they’d walked the same road, the one that lead to that London attorney, though since then they’d taken different paths. Lizzie didn’t regret hers, and sometimes believed she was crazy for it.

«Concerning Michael?» Lizzie inquired, just in case.

«No,» Tommy replied.

Then she knew he’d say nothing more, because sometimes he did get like this - like a puzzle, or one of those games children play, where you have to guess, and the other person is only allowed to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Lizzie was too old to play.

Michael parked right in front of them, and that reminded Lizzie of something.

«The files,» she said, «those of the company?»

Tommy lit another cigarette.

«You still have them,» she stated, though it should have been a question - Lizzie believed she already had the answer.

Tommy said nothing.

«Ever since?» Lizzie asked, without specifying since what - they never mentioned the night of the barley field.

«Yes,» he replied, then exhaled the smoke. «Ever since.»

Finn was showing them where to park, somewhat awkwardly, shielding himself from the rain with just a raised arm. They had no luggage with them, so they just ran inside after him. Lizzie held a sleeping Ruby, while Charlie was awake, scrambling to keep up with his father’s pace.

It was strange, seeing Finn play the landlord, faking an attitude that looked loose on him, because in their eyes he was pretty much still a child, and would always be.

He showed them the children’s room first, where Lizzie put down a still sleeping Ruby. She tucked her in, still in her nice clothes, then stopped to look at her in that strange bed, thinking that one day Finn’s children would sleep there, perhaps, wondering where Ruby would be then.

Their guest room wasn't the most spacious, but it was luxuriously furnished. The clothes they borrowed were soft, though they smelt like the closet they must have occupied for so long.

As they laid down on the strange bed, Lizzie was reminded of their previous life, the precariousness of it all; the many different mattresses and rooms, the way the light shone through every single one of them. How many nights she’d spent not knowing where she’d end up sleeping next, and how in the end she’d survived. It was the first night in months not spent in Warwickshire, ever since the Gypsies.

They’d survive this one, too - or maybe they would not, and every new goal Tommy set for himself was really just another attempt at pushing his own luck: one day it would break. Lizzie wondered what losing even meant, in that game, what the worst case scenario truly was.

She thought he’d be asleep - he must have been very tired to accept Finn’s invitation.

«Finn,» he said, after a while.

Lizzie turned around. He was staring at the ceiling, eyes wide open. The rain had quieted and she could hear him clearly. She thought about how so many of their conversations had happened like this - in the dark, him lying on his back while she stared at him from her side, only rarely the other way around.

«What’s wrong with him?» Lizzie asked.

«We need to keep an eye on Finn.»

That was new, for Lizzie.

«Finn knew,» Tommy told her.

Lizzie nodded. She figured he’d been there, during that fateful meeting, when Lizzie had been busy listening to young children play their little violins. Which had been painful, but she didn’t regret it; Lizzie was very glad that she hadn’t been able to attend the meeting.

«Do you think Finn’s a mole?» Lizzie asked, finding herself unable to believe it.

«He was never made for it,» Tommy replied, and there was a hint of something, in his voice, maybe defeat.

Afterwards, Lizzie felt his hand somewhere near her thigh, looking for meat, then finding it, grabbing her softly and then with an urgency. She let herself be maneuvered, until he was on top of her, and she noticed he was already hard; she welcomed him inside with relief, and excitement, even, as he filled her and thrusted, and the sounds they both made, she knew it wasn’t pleasure as much as a cry for help.

It quieted suddenly, when he kissed her as he came. He didn’t do it carefully, and she found herself struggling to breathe, until they were both panting, and spent.

They were awoken by a scream, late at night. Then, a child’s cry.

Lizzie thought about Maggie first, for some reason, maybe because she felt motherly towards her, she didn’t know.

But it was Maggie herself who came to their room, looking as pale as a ghost, but not hurt.

«Gina,» she said. «She’s bleeding.»

It’s too soon, Lizzie thought, she’s not that far along yet, please God, if not for her then for me: because I am tired and above me is a cloud I can’t quite recognize, but it scares me. Because something’s looming on the horizon, and I don’t need another sign.

Finn had joined his wife then, and if Tommy saw that he’d come from a completely different direction, from a completely different wing of the estate, he said nothing.

Lizzie looked at her husband then, and he didn’t look like he was going to move.

(He’d threatened that child.)

So she looked at Maggie, and the girl was looking at her, almost expectantly. She thought about the doctor, then about the old women who’d helped her when she’d fallen pregnant by accident, wondering how different it could be.

Pregnancy was a women’s affair.

Pregnancy was a women's affair, Tommy had always thought.

He’d always known it, ever since John’s birth; how he and Arthur had been taken outside by their father, while their mother was going through labour, and Aunt Polly had helped her then.

(Tommy didn’t think Gina was going to give birth. She hadn’t seemed large enough, and not enough time had passed. But he guessed everything was possible still.)

Aunt Polly had helped many women during birth, but now she wasn't there. It was her grandchild Gina was carrying, until otherwise proven; but Tommy doubted that Pol could have done much about the current situation, or that she could have done anything that Lizzie couldn’t do. If someone was ever fit to replace Polly in that role - or in any role, Tommy was sure - then that was Lizzie, and he’d realized it pretty early on.

(Ada could have, as well; Ada was her aunt’s niece.

Ada wasn’t like Lizzie, though - Ada wasn’t disillusioned. Though he could tell she was getting there, year by year.

They all were.)

Tommy let his head fall back onto the pillow as soon as Lizzie was gone.

He felt tired. Even the usual clarity which came after every time he fucked had deserted him sooner than usual.

It was not the kind of tired that a good night's sleep could cure, either. And besides, if he closed his eyes, there was a flicker of gold, though not her face, not anymore.

He’d stopped seeing her face, he’d stopped hearing her voice clearly. It was as if she was leaving the words directly inside his mind, dropping them off like a suitcase full of money in an alley. The voice he’d once loved was gone, and so was the face, and if he tried, he could no longer remember what Grace had looked like, though he could have described her, using words, without even a second thought.

Her features were getting blurry: her nose, which she had hated, but he had once loved, the lines around her mouth and her eyes. He tried not to make himself think about what she had looked like, because the thought that he'd forgotten scared him.

But he tried to think about her, sometimes, because sometimes he didn’t feel like thinking of her anymore.

All that was left was her golden hair, and he could see it sometimes, when it got bad, like now. He could see it when he closed his eyes. The voices, or the words, the form had changed but not the substance, those came when it was even worse.

(Though never as bad as the barley field: she’d made an entire speech then.)

So he kept his eyes open, because he didn’t want to follow the golden speck of hair. The gold was misleading, the gold was like the box full of guns: Tommy knew where the hair wanted to lead him, and he didn’t want to go there tonight.

(Besides, Warwickshire was on the other side of Birmingham, and no other field could do.)

Johnny Dogs had come to his office that morning. That was why they’d been slightly late to the baptism. He hadn’t told Lizzie, because he hadn't found the words, pretending that he couldn't find his tie instead.

Johnny Dogs had come and Tommy had assumed he was there for a maid, to fuck her behind his desk, which he didn't appreciate, but tolerated, if anything because Johnny Dogs was kin. Maybe he thought they’d already left, and he’d come to collect his prize.

Maybe he’d come because he needed something, like a pen or some paper to write a letter, or even a hand, because his writing was bad and he could barely spell his own name. So Tommy had taken a cigarette from the case and he’d lit it, as he’d waited for Johnny Dogs to tell him what it was that he needed.

«Tom,» the other man had said instead.

He was holding his hat in his hands. He had the face and the voice of a doctor who’s left the operating room to give someone some really bad news. Johnny Dogs wasn’t suited for that role.

«What,» Tommy had asked him, perhaps too curtly.

«In Scotland,» the other man had replied. He’d gulped. «Roxy’s nephew. They killed him.»

_Who_ , Tommy had screamed afterwards, but even though he’d screamed it, his body had been completely still, because he knew all too well who had killed Roxy’s nephew, and he wasn’t even surprised by it.

Of course he was, because he’d known Roxy's nephew, and he was a handsome young man, full of life, and it was hard to think he was dead and cold now. So had been Bonnie Gold, and so had been countless others, from the trenches to, well, wherever they were now, because the Great War had ended years ago, but that was about the only thing that had.

But it hadn't surprised him, not like that, and he could tell that it hadn’t surprised Johnny Dogs, either. Because there they were, staring at each other and the floor, looking for the words but knowing - or at least Tommy knew - that even if such words existed, he would never be able to find them, and that he didn’t want to.

It would have meant to admit vulnerability, it would have meant to admit that yet another piece of the elaborate foundation underneath his throne was crumbling, had been crumbling for a long, long time, all the way to the Middle Ages, perhaps, before Tommy’s mum had even been born and her mum and her mum’s mum, back when they’d all dressed in rags, and beyond, because they’d dressed in rags as little as twenty years ago.

 _Why_ , he could have asked, but that would have been insulting, because both men knew exactly why.

Of course, there must have been a motive, a spark to ignite the fire, maybe over the right of way, maybe over the usage of a field or some long forgotten debt. Tommy didn’t know. Tommy knew that was beside the point.

Once upon a time, after the war, among all the death and destruction, there had always been a why, more or less; Tommy felt as if that had been lost, the night of the barley field, and that the world had come back to the way it had been during the war, where they were ordered to dig and shoot and to crawl without really knowing why, to move forward, perhaps, but why they had to move forward in the first place, they weren’t told, and the only reason they were given was digging, digging, digging. That’s where their God had been, an inch past wherever they’d just touched, while digging.

(Though he knew, rationally, that nothing had happened that night that had changed the outside world, especially since no one even knew about the night of the barley field to begin with.

But some things had been lost that night. The linear progression of cause and effect was among those things.)

Tommy had never tried to deny that he was a Gypsy; but he’d always known he would have to go above and beyond to make up for it, to make other people forget about it, and that was something he would have liked to ask the Jew, one day, but he hadn’t, and he knew he never would, and that was perhaps the only thing he envied the man, that he wore some things on his sleeve, some things Tommy sometimes thought he understood, and some other things he knew he’d never understand at all.

He hadn’t told anyone yet. He hadn't wanted to tell Ada, because it was a joyful day, and because she’d already mourned too much, in his eyes. Plus, he thought his sister had already enough reasons to be afraid.

He hadn’t even thought about telling Finn. Arthur, he’d thought, he would tell Arthur, secretly wishing that John was still there. John had been the closest to Roxy’s nephew (were they together now?), but John wasn’t there and he would never even know about the baptism or Ada’s new baby, just like he’d never known about Ruby, or his marriage, and God knows what he would have said.

He would tell Arthur, he’d decided.

But then Arthur had spoken to him first, after the ceremony.

Tommy hand’t been afraid, before.

Which was ironic, all things considered, that ever since that night in December he’d been afraid of everyone except the only person who ever had a claim to his throne, a reasonable claim.

But he’d never been afraid of Arthur - not the way he’d been afraid of his cousin. Even though Arthur was the oldest, the first born, even though logically he should have worn the crown, Tommy had never felt threatened, not by him. The reasons why Arthur was unfit for the throne were clear to everyone, and to Arthur himself.

He _had_ been afraid of Arthur, just not like that. He’d been afraid for others, because of Arthur, and sometimes, rarely, even for himself; he’d been afraid of himself when he’d felt like something inside of him was turning, reminding him that it was the same womb that he and Arthur had first occupied; he’d been afraid of being Arthur, the few times he’d truly lost control, when he'd realized that he’d become unfit, somewhere, along the way. Inside the vortex of his mind, one windy night in the barley field, he’d thought about Arthur, and then himself.

Those had been the times where he’d been the most protective over his throne, when he’d felt unfit to occupy it, and never once had he felt like the threat came from Arthur.

He’d assumed that his brother wanted to talk about Linda, at first. He could have let him, before breaching the subject of what Billy Grade had told him.

Honestly, he thought he knew that Arthur’s issues came a long way, a long way further than just Linda. But Linda was easy, she was almost there - within hand’s reach, no need to inquire further. (Tommy knew the same could be said about himself, and the golden speck of hair.)

Linda was gone, to America, presumably not with the man Arthur had left without a face. Or maybe with him, as a walking and, possibly, talking reminder that the life she’d once lead would never really stay that far behind.

But Arthur hadn’t spoken about Linda, though Tommy knew she was there, right behind the veil in his eyes.

«Tommy,» he’d greeted him.

«Arthur,» he had replied.

He was doing the usual things he always did when he was trying to look solemn - he’d never stopped looking like a child who’s imitating his father while doing it: his long legs and arms moving awkwardly like flags in the wind.

«Been thinking,» his brother had said. «About that December thing, yeah?»

Tommy had stopped in his tracks. Before Arthur had said that, he’d been halfway there to greet him properly.

«That we thought everything was sealed shut. Well. I was thinking.»

And unsurprisingly the air had had that quality and Tommy had started seeing gold. Because he knew that his brother would never betray him but out of stupidity and he couldn't tell which was worse, that or the idea that his brother had started wanting the throne, in the end, because he bore their father’s name, after all.

Or maybe he would tell him that he’d seen Lizzie confabulate with Mosley, at the wedding, and then, Tommy knew, he wouldn’t have been able to believe him, and they would have fought, and he was already feeling weary because of what Johnny Dogs had told him and he was afraid he would not stand a chance.

«What do you know?» Tommy had asked his brother, and as he’d said it he’d noticed that he was out of breath. That happened often, nowadays. Arthur was staring at Ada, who was greeting Finn. Finn was holding the baby’s hand, smiling. He was no longer the baby of the family, not for a long time.

«I know nothing,» his brother had said, «I’m just afraid,» and then he had left.

Afterwards Tommy had known that it would have been useless, if he’d tried to extract more information from his brother while he was in that state - while they both were in that state. He’d worked with Finn more than Tommy had, maybe hoping to make another John out of him, maybe looking for the son he’d lost.

He’d gone to his Lizzie, they'd stood side by side like those ancient soldiers, making shapes out of their shields and swords, because they were stronger together, and together they’d gone to face his cousin.

Michael and Gina, they'd looked like snakes in their parents’ clothes; they were past wondering whether they kept secrets or not - which ones are your secrets, Tommy had wanted to ask them, just stop playing, and let’s all be serious for one day, because it’s not like we have much left to lose but our time, and I value my time and I think I’ve wasted too much. But of course one could not say such a thing; Tommy had stood a bit closer to Lizzie, and there had been less spite in her eyes that night.

He was thinking of her when he finally closed his eyes, and found nothing but black behind the eyelids. Her skin and her thighs, softer than they looked, though she was so thin, skin on skin, and the shape of him on her hips. He held those hips when she came back, and he slept.

She did not; she was still by his side, and rigid, but he didn’t seem to notice. Lizzie was too tired to wonder just how tired he was exactly.

She was tired too; she’d washed her hands three times, and the blood was mostly gone, but there was still some underneath her fingernails, on the hands she’d used to help Gina.

It was a boy and he was stillborn. Lizzie had given him to the girl after it had been done. Maggie had then given it to Gina, or maybe she’d put him down somewhere, Lizzie didn’t know, because she had left the room.

Without Polly there - with only the three of them, and Lizzie had felt as old as the two of them combined - she’d been the one to stare at Gina’s spread legs as she did it.

(Michael had been there too, in the room, standing in the back, trying to become one with the paneling; he hadn’t offered to help. Childbirth was a woman’s affair; Lizzie was the old witch now.)

It hadn’t felt strange, even if she didn’t know the American well, and what little she knew she despised. They’d been sisters by blood during that time, which could have been an hour, or it could have been two, but it felt like ages to Lizzie and, she was sure, to everyone in the room, including the maid who sometimes peeked through the door. Maybe it had been less than an hour, because the doctor, when Michael had called him, had said that he was an hour away. When she’d left the room, the doctor was nowhere to be seen, but the maid had said, he’s coming, so Lizzie had left.

She wasn’t worried for Gina; the bleeding had been mostly under control, and Gina didn’t look like Lizzie had felt on the night of Ruby’s birth. Or maybe because she knew that she was in the hands of God, and worrying wouldn’t change that.

She’d done it before, in a way, under the supervision of the old witch who only appeared when such things happened, the witch Lizzie had used as well, together with almost every girl in their trade.

She’d helped the witch while she was doing it to some girl who had worked with her, a slightly different task from the abortions she was used to. This one wasn’t induced, and the girl was quite far along, but she had started bleeding and things had looked bad immediately, because the blood was too much, the screams too loud.

The girl hadn’t been quick enough to act, the witch had said - out of fear or out of misplaced hope that the girl she was carrying would give her the family she’d never had, Lizzie hadn’t asked and the girl hadn’t probably even decided.

But it _had_ been a baby girl, too small to actually live, covered in red blood and blue in the face. It had been the first newborn Lizzie had even held, and she wasn’t breathing. Her mother had bled and screamed just like Gina had, or worse, and when Lizzie had left her to the old witch’s ministrations, she'd looked like she was dead. Immediately after, the old witch had taken the baby from Lizzie’s hands, placing her in those of her mother. They were the only three people who ever saw her.

The girl had survived, because she’d seen her again mere weeks later, in the streets. They’d exchanged looks but neither of them had said anything, and Lizzie didn’t know where she was now.

The other girls said it had happened because she’d kept working during the early stages of her pregnancy - Lizzie would have done the same, if anything because a pregnant woman needs a roof on top of her head, too.

They said it happened because she’d kept working, and because she’d strained herself and because she’d run up and down the stairs of the apartments of the various men she had as customers - she was young and attractive and many johns asked for her specifically, even when she’d started to show.

Because she’d walked barefoot in November, because she’d caught a vicious wind, everyone had looked for reasons, whispering behind the girl’s back. Lizzie had weighed each option, without saying anything, and she’d doubted every single one of them; when, years later, she’d fallen pregnant herself - and she’d kept it, this time - she'd realized that they were all lies.

They were lies, because even then, even in the comfort of the house she’d briefly occupied before Tommy had proposed, she’d walked barefoot at night and she’d caught more than one vicious wind, and yet there she was, Ruby, alive and well.

(And on the other hand, Lizzie had discovered, people need to find reasons to comfort themselves that it will never happen to them.)

And maybe, if Lizzie had been like those people - it would have been so easy to find reasons, for Gina. Lizzie despised Gina, at the end of the day, and she despised Michael and sometimes wished Pol had never started looking for her son in the first place.

She’d despised her at the baptism, and she’d despised her at her own birthday, when they’d first met. But she couldn’t despise her now.

Gina had slept with Mosley, and there was a good chance that it was Mosley’s boy she had helped come out of her, but only to never see the light. Gina had manipulated Michael into trying to steal the company from Tommy, and Michael had been more than happy to comply - so maybe it wasn’t even Gina’s fault, Lizzie didn’t know, didn't care, she thought it didn’t matter in the slightest.

Tomorrow, word would come out and so many people would be in a lot of pain; Michael already was. Polly didn’t know it yet, but Lizzie did, which made her heart ache for her; and Polly didn’t even know the half of it.

That Pol's only daughter was dead, it pained Lizzie, that she’d died together with Polly’s lover, and now her only grandson as well - a grandson that probably wasn’t even hers to begin with. Lizzie should have felt something, towards Gina, knowing what she and Mosley had done, how it could have harmed Polly, and knowing what Mosley had done to her, to Lizzie.

But she couldn’t, and that was a fact. She was staring at the ceiling and finding it hard to despise even Mosley, after all. What even was left of her, she didn’t know.

She pitied herself, and she pitied Tommy, who was passed out with his hands on her hips. She pitied Polly, and everyone she’d ever lost, pitied Maggie, who looked like a bird in a cage, pitied Ada and her new baby who was born an orphan, pitied Arthur and pitied Linda and pitied young Finn who was born into a war he would never understand; she even pitied Tommy’s friend, the homosexual Jew. Pitied Gina, more than anything, and to a lesser amount Michael: for their boy and their marriage and their youth.

At least they were old, Lizzie thought, looking at Tommy by her side, though their youth hadn’t been much better, either. But they’d had hope then, if not for a better future, for _one_ future, even the last one left in the shop, its fabric dirty and soggy and tearing up at the seams in places.

That was why Tommy had proposed to her, Lizzie thought. He wouldn’t have married her, if he’d thought he only had one night left on Earth. Because it was hard, and no one would ever choose to spend his last night like that. There must have been some hope in there, among all their shared troubles and sorrows.

That made Lizzie pity the two of them even more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry… it’s not entirely my fault, all of these people are miserable in the show as well. But it’s also my fault I know lmao and I even have a soft spot for Gina (also because I’m a little in love with Anya Taylor-Joy).
> 
> I think there’s like 2, mayyyybe 3 chapters left! Can’t believe this is coming to an end. Thank you all as usual for your kind reviews <3


	15. Ardent for some desperate glory (Part I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _So it was hope, he figured, Lizzie was hope, in spite of everything and against what he felt._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tommy’s fortieth! Sounds like he’s a Gemini.  
> The end is approaching fast. It was fun to write this and I even managed not to lose momentum, even if I've been working on this story for six months or so now.

And before they knew it, the time came to organize Tommy’s fortieth.

Lizzie wondered why their lives seemed to be spent throwing parties and attending celebrations, lately, while there was nothing at all to celebrate. The company was running smoothly and, she was sure, every time she looked at the maids as they ironed their linen sheets, if another Black Friday was coming, they’d be able to take the hit without their lifestyle suffering.

The truth was, there was a point past which not even that mattered; gone were those days. They were not on the edge of the cliff anymore, one bad storm away from not having a place to sleep, one bad day on the stock market away from losing their source of livelihood, not that they’d ever been there — neither of them had ever been a factory worker, neither of them had ever worked a regular job.

And everyone they saw now, on a daily basis — they seemed to be all in the same boat. When they cried and screamed at the losses, Lizzie thought it was greed, or maybe habit.

But they were not on the same boat, upon further analysis. Lizzie didn’t have to worry about johns and younger girls stealing customers anymore; but one gunshot away from losing it all, they still were, and would always be, and they’d grown to accept it, inside their hearts.

From the outside, one would have called it business as usual. They had maids and horses and stables and a big house and staff and children who played musical instruments, and a relatively blooming company and political career as an MP. One could have called it flourishing, Tommy’s career — those who didn’t know what really was happening behind the scenes, and only saw a new party and the dawn of a new something all over Europe. Of a new _something_ — be it a great new world, or maybe a threatening wind, blowing all over England from the heart of the continent.

Lizzie thought it was the latter, and not only that; something big looming ahead, a fire ball on the horizon, and they were headed towards it on a train, a train that ran fast through the fields. And every time they hosted a party, every time they attended one — it was like the hybris of the classics, the train gaining speed and leaving sparkles on its tracks. The crash was approaching faster and faster and Lizzie knew it was too late to jump off the train without being killed from the impact.

Lizzie would have liked to pick the colors, at first, or the flowers, do something other than looking after the list of invitees and prepare the envelopes; they’d hired someone else to write the invites, someone she’d supervised. She’d never stopped being a secretary, after all.

She would have liked to decorate the house, or at least direct the maids as they decorated it, like a general with his army, put that bouquet there, by the fireplace, dust the shelves and rearrange the books. Move that table in the middle, that’s where the food will be laid out, instructing the waiters and the florist. Like a general, fighting for a bigger cause.

And normally, she would have done all of that, and more, normally she would have been in charge of that. She would have liked to do it as a present, to go with the wristwatch she’d purchased for him, with the initials and a few words from her.

But as she looked at the intensity in Tommy’s eyes as they ran over the catalogues, she thought it was a bigger gift still, to let him do it, to let him exert whatever control he had left.

That afternoon she went to their bedroom; she had a few hours before the guests would arrive. She’d picked out a dress — _the >_ dress — not that she lacked elegant attire now; but that was nonetheless _the_ dress.

It was red, which was daring, she figured, to be worn with red lipstick to match. It was long and shimmery and the fabric light enough for the early summer. It moved when she walked, and it made her feel younger, and careless, walking alone in the night, along the streets of Small Heath or to the docks.

Once it was on, she left the room — getting ready was always such a quick affair, and yet the other wives could speak about it for hours; her lips were blood red, her jewelry heavy. She felt out of place in the still empty house.

She was looking for him, because she wanted him to see her. To be his gift, perhaps, because it was his fortieth birthday, in spite of everything.

He found him in the main room, among the ribbons and bouquets and centerpieces. He was fixing the ribbons, until they were puffy and straight. Cyril was by his side, fearless, knowing no one would lock him up in a room lately, because Tommy hadn’t wanted it. He’d wanted the dog among the guests, because it was endearing, when an important man made time in his busy schedule to look after a dog, or because most people loved dogs, with their wet noses and big paws. Cyril was on the floor by the fireplace and he was looking at Tommy, and Lizzie suddenly recalled who his first owner had been and the scene made her smile.

It was strange, seeing Tommy like this, in the middle of his kingdom, his heart. He looked like a maid, Lizzie thought, fixing picture frames and books on the shelves, opening every cupboard for no reason other than stare at its contents, then closing it again.

He took a ribbon from the wall then, with more care in his hands than she’d ever seen in him. He held it in front of his eyes, then crouched by the dog’s side, put it around Cyril’s neck, securing it tightly but not too tightly around the dog’s massive neck. And Cyril let him do it, with what seemed like mercy in his eyes, staring at his new owner like a wise man with his disciples. Tommy scratched the dog between his ears then, gave him a light pat on the shoulder until he got up and left.

The family photos were on display, all over the house. Some were not photos but portrays, handmade, by some Gypsy who must have been a good painter, because most of the portrays had the same signature.

Lizzie suspected it was part of a ploy — to make London’s highest think he truly was the family man. The people in the pictures wore tattered and torn clothes, though it wasn’t so noticeable, the quality lower than what modern photography and money could obtain; but their status and heritage were still visible, to the trained eye. The people in the photographs looked shocked, though Lizzie knew that could not be true, because back in the days it was nearly impossible to be photographed without knowing it, and without putting a fair amount of effort into it.

And even then, some photos were blurry, some of the subjects unfocused or looking in strange places, outside the frames — they were not good pictures, but they were what they’d been able to get, back when it had been way harder to get them.

He took her by the hand, at some point, without saying a word, pulling her from the sofa where she was resting by the hand, showing her around. The red dress moved as they walked together through the room.

Lizzie had already seen the photographs countless times, of course.

On a shelf in the hallway leading to their bedroom there were some of Gypsy relatives Lizzie had barely heard about. Tommy stopped briefly for those. Then, some of the siblings as children, thanks to their mother and aunt Pol, Lizzie was sure, because for some a photograph is important, important enough to pay for it. Lizzie’s family never had any photographs, and she’d never cared much for them. She’d had some taken of Ruby when she’d been very young, but it was getting rarer and rarer nowadays; maybe the same had happened with the Shelbies, maybe that was why only a few of the pictures were recent.

No one would see the pictures in the hallway leading to their bedroom, even if they stayed the night, because the guest rooms were in the other wing, which was more sparsely and formally decorated, but Tommy was fixing those picture frames anyway, showing them to her at the same time.

Neither would they see the pictures inside their own bedroom; Lizzie had seen them so many times that she’d forgotten about them, she’d stopped noticing them altogether.

«Why are you showing me this?» Lizzie asked in the end, after seeing yet another Gypsy she’d heard about once, a man named Jim who lived on a boat. She regretted it as soon as she asked — interrupting Tommy when he was like this was rarely a wise move. He was in the past, she figured, much like those people who walk in their sleep; she’d heard it was dangerous to awake them suddenly, that they might even die on the way from sleep to reality.

He stopped in his tracks, still holding her hand, as they were approaching the batch of pictures on top of his nightstand. Don’t stop, Lizzie thought, and don’t die on your way. I just want to know.

He shrugged. «No reason,» he replied. «Thought you’d be interested.»

The first guests would arrive in less than an hour.

«I am,» she replied in the end, voice lower than she’d wanted it. «Very much. Just wondering why.»

«Sometimes you don’t decide when — they do.»

She nodded. The maid would notify them, should the guests arrive. Some more time in the bedroom wouldn’t hurt.

He opened the drawer underneath the pictures on the nightstand. «Polly has boxes full of these,» he told her. He was smiling, like he was explaining some great plan, to take over the city, to take over the world. But it was not blueprints he was looking at, or weapons or pounds of a new drug. There were only yellowed bits of paper with long gone faces on them.

«I’d like to see them, sometimes,» Lizzie tried.

He’d taken an envelope from the drawer; it looked old, yellow and torn on the edges. He opened it with his most careful fingers, extracted an old photo, its edges just as torn.

It was a woman, with the dark hair and light eyes Lizzie had learned to know so well. She thought Tommy resembled her the most among the siblings and it immediately made some kind of sense in her head. She was young, and Lizzie knew she’d never grown much older.

He spoke, without any real need. «My mum,» he said, holding it up in the light that shone through the window — the lights were still off, the day young enough and getting longer as summer came. Holding it up for her to see.

They were on the bed when the maid came to warn them. Lizzie had barely enough time fix the red dress. «You’re beautiful,» he told her before leaving, and it left her petrified for a few seconds, enough for the sound of his footsteps to disappear down the hallway.

She found him in the garden next, the garden he’d had decorated, because the season allowed it. It was unlike Tommy, to be born in the summer; Lizzie had always thought that he had to be a winter person. She’d been surprised, mildly, when she’d learned he was born in June.

Surprisingly enough, Michael and Gina were the first to arrive, together with Polly, dark and somber in her attire, but with an almost friendly look in her eyes. _Truce_ , Lizzie thought. Then Polly took her by the arm, dragged her to a tent in the garden away from the men. And something in her eyes took Lizzie back to the present, or so she felt — something in her eyes made Lizzie remember the events of just a few weeks ago and she wondered how exactly she’d forgotten.

She’d let Tommy drag her into the past, maybe. She’d fallen into an open photograph, and she’d forgotten.

«I wanted to say thank you,» Polly told her.

Lizzie didn’t understand. «For what,» she said. «I am so incredibly sorry.»

«It was a boy…» Polly said. She was looking up at the sky, which was blue, not a speck of white to be seen. It was going to be a beautiful night. «It would have been a boy.»

Lizzie knew that, because she’d been the first person in the world to know that, and one of the last.

«You did well,» she resumed after a while. «You were with her. I’ve always known you had it in you.» 

Lizzie hadn’t.

Then Polly turned to her daughter in law, walked back to her. Lizzie hadn’t realized that Polly liked Gina so much — maybe Polly herself hadn’t, either, not until a few weeks ago, and maybe she still didn’t like her so much, but some people are all someone has.

When Pol had taken Lizzie’s arm, Tommy hadn’t dared follow them. Childbirth was a women’s affair. Besides, he wouldn’t have had the words, and the praise was for Lizzie, and Lizzie alone.

So he stood there, the dog by his side, the dog with its ribbon, which looked silly now — Solomons would have liked it, if he’d been there to see him, maybe Solomons would be there to see him soon, even if he hadn’t been formally invited; Tommy had never needed to invite him.

It was time to greet his cousin, he figured, if anything because the man was standing awkwardly in front of him, holding a gift and waiting for pleasantries. He hadn’t heard from him since the phone call after the baptism — the phone call Lizzie knew nothing about.

It had been unpleasant to make that phone call, to ask for his help, to frame his request as a call for help — because Tommy had grown to despise him, even though they were kin, and that clouded his judgement, dangerously so. But one thing he knew, now, after he’d seen him lost, for the first time since forever, seen him truly, grieving and out of work and pouting like a child who’s been grounded: the threat he’d once envisioned had been way too large to come from someone so small.

That Michael had never wanted to save Mosley, or to kill him, either, that maybe he’d never even thought about it in the first place, it appeared clear now. Maybe he would have wanted to kill him, if he’d known what his wife had done with him, but that meant nothing to Tommy now.

That Michael only ever wanted money and an attractive wife with big breasts, booze and powder to spend a good night in his hotel room, he knew. And maybe Tommy would have been the same, at his age, if it hadn’t been for the war, but the war had happened and there was no way to know what would have happened otherwise.

None of it mattered right now; the phone call had been a truce. With that phone call he’d given Michael a task.

Tommy had found that in situations of conflict, whenever a position of power is threatened — there was no better way to defuse it than to assign tasks. He’d learned it during his service. There was some part of the human mind, or soul, now he couldn’t tell, that reacted well to being told what to do. And he’d exploited that, more times than he cared to count, and most of the time it had worked.

«I’ve spoken to Finn,» Michael said.

Tommy nodded.

«And Gina has spoken to Maggie.»

He spoke of the girl as if they were familiar. Tommy thought the Jew might not enjoy that for his quasi-daughter.

«I think he’s hiding something,» Michael said.

«Do you think he’s alarmed? Knows we’re after him?»

His cousin stopped to think.

«No,» he said in the end.

«I spoke to Arthur, too,» he continued. Tommy wondered when he’d grown so distant from his oldest brother that his cousin had become closer to him than he was. Maybe when he’d moved away — it had been inevitable, once he’d left Small Heath.

«And?»

Michael took a big breath, which Tommy took as a warning that he was not going to like his next words.

«They were working with a fellow,» Michael continued, «in December.»

Tommy knew before he even said the name. «Billy Grade,» he stated.

«Billy Grade,» Michael repeated. They were walking between the tents he’d set up now, slowly, at what must have seemed like a leisurely pace. Polly was talking to Gina and Lizzie was just standing there, awkwardly, looking at them.

«Do you think…?» Michael was retreating now, a strategy Tommy knew well — to avoid the full responsibility of his statement, to let Tommy come to his own conclusions.

«Were they ever alone?»

«Once,» Michael replied, «after the meeting.»

Tommy’s legs felt heavy. Maybe it was just one of those things that come with getting old — he was forty years old today.

«And do you think Finn revealed him our plans?» he asked his cousin.

Michael shrugged. «I honestly find it unbelievable.»

But Tommy didn’t.

Finn had always been like that, ever since he’d entered the business — overeager, and overexcited, with a passion that no one had really bothered to channel, to direct. And Arthur said it was due to his age, but Tommy didn’t believe it, because he remembered being his age, even if he had gone through the war and Finn hadn’t.

Willing to be an adult, yet never ready to accept the full consequences. And Arthur had been there for him, but it was still Arthur and he'd still been Finn.

(Not John. He’d never be John.)

«But do you think Billy Grade worked for Mosley?» his cousin asked him.

Tommy stopped to think. He’d found it unlikely then, and he still found it unlikely now. «Thank you,» he replied.

Another car was approaching the house. «It’s him,» Michael said. Tommy had realized — he’d been told, by Lizzie, that his brother had bought a new car. It looked like his own, like Tommy’s — like the one Finn had been on, the one that had nearly exploded with Finn on it, back in ’19. Out of all the models he could have chosen, he chose the one that most resembled Tommy’s.

He didn’t greet his brother when he parked, letting Lizzie do the dirty work, make small talk with the girl.

«Happy birthday,» his brother tried, from a distance. He was carrying a bottle of wine.

Tommy had wanted to keep the party outdoors. The weather was nice and the temperature warm enough. It’s a beautiful night, Lizzie had told him, as he’d kissed her absentmindedly before greeting yet another MP. But it was dark now, and the party had moved indoors, and in spite of the amount of care Tommy had put into the rooms and the decor, he didn’t enjoy it.

Maybe _because_ of the amount of care he’d put into the photographs, the portraits and their frames — some things were still sacred, in spite of everything; and while it was a necessity, sometimes, to expose oneself, to show one’s underside, he didn’t like the idea of London’s finest among the family pictures, staring at his ancestors from above their thin glasses, curiosity and entertainment in their eyes.

So he’d gone outside, to smoke. Maybe he was expecting to see the familiar car.

The Jew came slowly towards him, leaning more heavily than ever on his good leg. The beard and the darkness still concealed his face, but Tommy knew.

«The dog has a ribbon,» he told him, without even knowing why.

«Now, something I’d really want to see,» the other man replied. He stood there awkwardly, a couple of yards away.

«Happy birthday,» he muttered. «Welcome to old age.»

Tommy realized he didn’t actually know how old the other man was; probably just a few years older than Tommy himself, but he hadn’t aged with grace, because of the disease, or the hardships, or maybe he was just one of those people who looked older, beyond their years.

Solomons then took a bag from underneath his baggy clothes. «For that incurable sadness,» he said, without moving, so Tommy stepped forward and took it. The bag was dirty and heavy in his hands; it looked like two bottles.

«Thank you,» he replied, polite, but not the way he’d thanked the other MPs, because he knew he didn’t need to.

«Is it worth it, to celebrate like this?» Solomons asked him.

Tommy lit another cigarette.

«Necessary,» he said at last.

«At least you have the mistress, ay?»

Tommy found it funny that he’d mentioned Lizzie, again — he knew Solomons had called her the night of the barley field, and they’d seen each other now, more times than he would have liked.

(Even once would have been more than he would have liked.)

«She’d good,» he conceded in the end, thinking that it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t nearly enough for Lizzie.

That without Lizzie he wouldn’t have been here now, and he wasn’t just thinking about the night in the barley field; that somewhere along the way, she’d become the lighthouse, the wooden stick young trees are tied to, to make the grow straight and strong. He was done growing, sometimes he felt like the future had nothing left to offer him anymore, but then why, God, why give him Lizzie — if something, anything, was in store for him, he’d only be able to face it with her.

So it was hope, he figured, Lizzie was hope, in spite of everything and against what he felt.

The Jew nodded. Tommy thought the Jew had to know all of that, and possibly more. He was a god, after all, he’d said so himself. «The secret is that no one should know when you were born,» he supplied.

Tommy wondered whether the girl knew, whether Maggie had ever celebrated something with the man. A Christmas, or however Jews called those, a birthday, a wedding or a baptism or a funeral.

«She’s inside,» he told Solomons in the end, «want me to call her?»

The other man looked tempted, but then Tommy heard footsteps, and the girl was there, fully dressed, a glass in hand. She looked surprised, when she saw Solomons. She stopped in her tracks, finished the glass she was holding.

«Finn left,» she informed Tommy.

«Drinking just like your old man, I see,» Solomons interrupted.

Maggie blushed.

«Ashamed of your family’s choices in friends?» Solomons asked her.

«No,» she replied, then she lunged forward and hugged him. She did it without any particular care, in spite of the man’s cane and his careful posture. He let the cane fall and held her, as well. Tommy thought he’d never see Solomons hug anyone, not like that: it wasn’t part of a scheme, it wasn’t a business pact, it was two people who cared about each other showing it by putting their arms around each other, the Jew’s almost engulfing the small girl whole.

Before she left, he broke the embrace, putting his hands on her shoulders and looking at her in the eyes. «Look at you,» he said. «You were this size last time I saw you,» but he didn’t show the size with his hands, he didn’t move at all, just staring at the girl’s dark eyes with his. And besides, Tommy knew that wasn’t true, that Solomons had been a friend of the old man’s family for the entirety of the girl’s life, and he must have seen her fairly recently, before the wedding.

He tried to imagine him, sitting at the table in the mansion, coming over for Sunday lunch, the old man on one side and the girl on the other, young and small, discussing the sacred texts, the holy spirit and their taste in books. It was hard to imagine and hard to understand.

«Who’s driving you home, if Finn already left?» Tommy asked her. He felt almost guilty to interrupt.

«Michael and Gina,» she replied, and Tommy didn’t miss the way the Jew rolled his eyes, «later.»

«Do you want a ride, baby girl?» Solomons asked her. «Just the two of us? Like good old times?»

Maggie turned her head towards Tommy, almost with a pleading look in her eyes, the eyes Charlie gave him when he wanted dessert or he wanted to get out of eating nasty vegetables for dinner. Tommy didn’t think the girl had to plead him, so he nodded.

«I’ll tell Michael you found a ride,» he told her.

He watched the two figures disappear into the night, both climbing into the backseat of the car. Maggie looked like she was light as a feather — maybe it was the alcohol, but Tommy knew it wasn’t. He wondered whether what he’d done to her was akin to keeping a bird in a cage, even though he knew Solomons wouldn’t have offered her hand in marriage if he had been so concerned about her wellbeing with the Shelbies.

But maybe he’d miscalculated, because it couldn’t be a life, not like that — playing the good wife to his brother, when they were barely more than children themselves. And she was a child, in the Jew’s eyes: it was heartwarming, somehow, that however unlikely their relationship might have been, they’d found each other. He thought that Solomons would have made a good father, hoped he’d take the girl for a ride tonight. The house, and Finn — they could wait until the morning.

Later, he wouldn’t be able to tell — whether someone confused Finn’s car with his own, when they shot at the wheels to trap him in the narrow street between the fields. When they pried the doors open, he wouldn’t be able to tell you whether they were surprised, when they saw a young man instead of the newly forty year old they were looking for, or whether that was planned, or maybe they just didn’t care.

Even if they were really surprised, they apparently deemed it good enough; but they must have seen his face, through the dark of the fields, in the middle of the ambush, because they shot between the eyes. He fell, but not far, because he was on his knees and someone was holding his hands together behind his back. He fell to the side, eyes open, and he was left there to die, if he already hadn’t died.

It was Maggie who called, the next morning, when she didn’t see her husband at the breakfast table, because they slept apart, and she’d come home in the first hours of the morning, because the Jew had taken her for a ride; it was a farmer who called the police upon finding the body on the narrow street between his two fields.

Later, the doctors would say it was instant, that he didn’t have time to realize what was going on. He didn't suffer, they meant, God was merciful to him in his final moments and the bullet destroyed his brain immediately, and there's no pain without a brain, there's nothing at all.

Tommy knew, saw through their words, the doctors themselves knew, that it’s hard not to know when the bleak midwinter comes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am once again so sorry. The final twist is something I’ve been planning basically ever since the beginning.
> 
> Yeah, I think Billy Grade might have been important, otherwise it would have been a very weird red herring? But we don’t know who he was working for, at least not yet. I obviously have my theories though :)
> 
> There's a pretty good chance the next chap will be the last. I don't know how that makes me feel...


	16. Ardent for some desperate glory (Part II)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _So when he’d come back, when he’d found a chest full of guns and a place in the world, he’d been relieved, at night, by the morphine and by that thought:_
> 
> _If I must die for one cause, let it at least be my own._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWs for, well, death, WWI talk and antitsiganism.  
> Second to last chapter, and I’m trying to get the last one done by mid November. It has been a hell of a ride!

The light in the morgue was cold and the scenario familiar, its details reversed from what Tommy remembered so vividly: the weather was wrong, so far from the chill of Boxing Day. Two brothers were standing near the metal frame where the body lay, a weeping widow and one wife.

The police had warned them first. They’d called the house and the maid had brought them the telephone.

They’d been both naked, on the bed, Tommy already smoking his first cigarette of the day. Farmers woke early in the mornings, because the nature of their job required it; they woke early to work on their land, and maybe find dead boys in the middle of it. Maggie slept in, sometimes until noon, because she didn’t have many things to do. She hadn’t even noticed her husband missing.

When the police had called, Tommy thought, looking at the girl who was standing by the metal frame somewhere by her husband’s head — when the police had called Thomas Shelby, she’d been on the staircase, maybe, going down to the breakfast table, asking herself for the first time today where her husband was; perhaps even turning around to check his room, to see whether he’d made it back safe last night.

(Tommy knew they slept in different rooms. It wouldn’t have made a difference, anyway.)

Funny how in spite of everything this was where the Shelbies ended up; that no matter how special the treatment they got, when one of them died the police had to be called and a ride arranged to transport the body from wherever they found it to the morgue. And the morgue was the same as the one everyone else ended up in, save for royalty, perhaps, its walls the same and the overworked clerk the same as well, the same that’s greeted peasants and factory workers for years, and the skinny girls who came to say goodbye to a fellow whore when no one else would.

The Shelbies had had their special treatment even then, but gone were the days of entire cinemas all to themselves. There was a sign on the door that led to the morgue, and the sign said: ‘Closed’.

(Lizzie had told him, had suggested, that other families wanted to see their loved ones as well. Nonsense, Tommy had thought, it can’t be true that someone else lost a brother, not today.  
But it had to be true, rationally; he knew.)

Still, he was determined to stay there a while; he knew that Lizzie wouldn’t stop him, and Polly and maybe the girl would stay by his side as he did it. No matter how uncomfortable standing could be, on the cold tile floor, stained by earth, grass and blood, with no food or cold water or any kind of relief against the June heat.

It takes a lot of courage, to die in June; maybe it’s easier to do it in December, when at least the world itself seems to be dying with you. To die in June, when not even a half mile from your spot on the gravel someone is celebrating…

Celebrating what, Tommy couldn’t say — the decade he’d just lived, or the one he might be going to live through. Even though, as the years went by, the world had started taking away pieces of him, one by one: he was afraid that soon there would be no more left.

It had been his mother first, and then Greta, followed closely by too many boys to even count; and then it had been Grace, and then John, Ben Younger and Bonnie and Aberama Gold. And now another brother. He was the youngest brother now, not counting Ada, born after his mother had died, born to a woman who would never even know that he died.

Tommy had been old enough to be his brother’s father and now he was the youngest one left.

It was funny, how many dead boys he’d seen back in the days, how much time had passed, and how strange a sight it was now that he was forty.

Boys who’d died three, two weeks before the end of the war, struck by mortars against the terse morning sky as they emptied their bowels in the field where they all emptied them. Struck as they sat, their bottoms bare as the day they were born, and in those last moments, Tommy had always been too scared to wonder — had they still believed in the cause?

When the tunnel had collapsed, there had been no cause then; just four men, two of them brothers, and a rapidly collapsing wall of stone and dirt. No causes then, just the blood in their veins and sheer survival.

But Tommy knew, that those boys who'd died while they were taking a shit, or while they were walking on a field and hit the wrong spot with their foot, they saw it, for one fleeting second and then nothing, shorter than a single heartbeat, because that was how little it took them to die. Crazy how the universe could be held within just one single heartbeat —

(They must have taken it one step further, one step Tommy never saw, because he was alive now and they weren’t, and truly a few of them came back from that step.

Barney Thompson had come back from that step.

But Tommy had never been brave enough to ask him.)

So when he’d come back, when he’d found a chest full of guns and a place in the world, he’d been relieved, at night, by the morphine and by that thought:

If I must die for one cause, let it at least be my own.

So maybe he’d forgotten, afterwards, that the cause might have been his, but it certainly wasn’t everyone else’s. Just like that cause he’d first fought for — it must have been someone’s cause, somewhere, in a room with questionable furniture that only a few men in Europe truly knew.

It hadn’t been Grace’s cause and it hadn’t been John’s— hadn’t been Ben Younger’s, either, and God forgive him neither had it been Finn’s.

And as he sat on his knees, in the street between the two fields that belonged to the farmer who’d called the police three hours ago — as he sat on bloody knees, scraping against the gravel through the torn fabric of his nicest pants, had Finn believed in the cause?

Had he been proud, or had he regretted it, had he thought it worth it, after all? And how could he?

Because Finn would’ve never understood the cause — Tommy used to believe it was Finn’s fault.

No one else would have understood the cause, not ever _(it’s the crazy men who think they’re surrounded by craziness, someone had once told him, and Tommy despised it, because sometimes he wasn’t so sure they were wrong)._

Not even Lizzie, not completely — though Lizzie understood quite a bit more than most.

(She understood _him_ , Lizzie.)

Polly was outside with Charlie and Ruby. Lizzie hadn’t wanted them to see what a dead body looked like.

Tommy knew he had to leave the room soon, to look after his children, to allow Polly to mourn properly. She should have been in here first, he thought, I shouldn’t have let her look after my children as I mourned a brother I killed with my own hands.

He wasn’t even sure that he had much of a right to mourn — he’d complained so much back then, about the boys killed by the mortars while they were taking a shit, killed at nineteen for a cause that wasn’t even their own —

What had he done that was so different? Bonnie Gold, Ben Younger, young Finn, all killed for a cause that didn't concern them, killed as they were taking a shit in the shared shitting field, attempting to live a life Tommy had been hellbent on destroying.

And he couldn't even tell why.

At some point, the girl left.

She’s failed, Tommy thought immediately. This is a test and she's failing it.

Her short, quick strides away from the body, they were not the dignified walk of a widow. Her figure wasn't the solemn image of a modern day Penelope — but how could it be, since Finn was dead, and since she was little more than a child?

Lizzie looked like she was going to run after her, already pointing towards the exit on her long legs. But at the very last second she looked like she’d decided to let her be, that it wasn’t worth leaving Finn’s remains.

Tommy looked at her, made a gesture that meant, I’ll watch the children, stay there, and he left the morgue, but he didn’t fetch the children; he left them with Polly, because they were safer that way, and besides, Polly would have plenty of time to mourn. She’d been mourning all her life.

The girl was right outside the door. Outside, people were chatting, cars passing by them, life as usual, and Tommy didn’t know how.

Once upon a time, had they stuck to their original plan — of running the city, running Small Heath, Birmingham at the most — once upon a time the razor gang would have forced even the last church forgotten by God himself to ring its bells in mourning. No cars would have driven past and no one would have talked, and everyone in the street would have worn black and stared at their own footsteps in silence.

But they didn’t, and they would never do it. Even Maggie was not wearing dark. It all had happened too soon, and she hadn’t realized. She was wearing a pink dress, of all things, hair down on her shoulders, long, like that of a child.

«Do you think he found out?» Maggie asked him.

Her eyes were wet, Tommy thought. How could they be, if they hadn’t even been married one year, how could anything she was feeling be real, how could what anyone else felt be.

«Maggie,» he said.

«Mosley. Do you think he found out?»

Tommy wondered how much she knew — wondered whether that even mattered, because who would have believed her? She was a rich child in a pink dress crying out in the street.

«Do you think the mole told him? That you tried to kill him?»

He wanted to slap her, he realized. To tell her that he’d tolerated her when she’d been harmless, asking her little questions as if the entire thing was a game. But it wasn’t a game — not anymore.

«Have you found out who’s the mole?» Maggie asked.

He stepped forward, as if she wasn’t even there, and didn’t stop until she moved, and she almost fell from the pavement and onto the street.

«Tommy?» she asked.

«Who told you you could call me that?»

She didn’t reply.

«How do you know he wasn’t the mole himself?»

Michael’s words, they were still ringing in his ear — he’d been distracted, he thought, by his dislike for his cousin; that had made him blind. He’d forgotten about Billy Grade.

Maybe he’d forgotten about Billy Grade, about Finn, because he hadn't thought him capable. He’d overestimated and underestimated his brother at the same time. So in the end it was his fault and it wasn’t, that he was dead. Cold and dead and stiff on a table.

«If you mean the football player,» she said, her eyes wetter, and Tommy envied her courage, if anything, if he _did_ feel anything as she spoke, «he was not working for Mosley. And Finn — he knew you knew.»

Tommy moved back, allowing her to get back onto the pavement, just in time to avoid a passing car.

«He thought you knew, and he was afraid.»

«Rightly so,» he replied. He should have said it earlier, back when he’d been alive.

«Thought you’d made us marry to get him away from the business,» she continued. That, Tommy thought, it might have been true; I made you marry my brother because I thought the Jew had a good deal for me — I made you marry my brother because I owed the Jew a favor, because I once shot his eye off. I made you marry my brother, because the Jew loved you, and you need to pray that the Jew’s love will be enough.

«He thought you hated him, all along,» she continued. «At the party, he was scared. And that time I saw it too. I knew you knew. That's why he left sooner — he was too scared to stay.»

Of course, he thought then.

He wasn’t there anymore — not in the street, or at the morgue, he wasn’t anywhere anymore, he was in a place that only had room for one thought, and the thought was — of course my brother died thinking I hated him; of course the last look I gave him was in anger.

(Or did he die thinking he was dying because of me?)

«Mr Shelby?» The girl was calling.

«Mr Shelby?»

He was back on the street now, people passing by closer and closer, speaking louder and louder and a girl in a pink dress calling his name.

«You can have the estate,» she said, «my father said you could. Mr Solomons… he found a place for me… but I think I…»

He must have looked very stern, because the girl stopped in her tracks.

«Do not think,» he said, «that you are free to go.»

She was staring at him now, the way a child stares at her teacher who’d just punished her for something. What she had done, he couldn’t tell —

He had hidden it, hadn’t she; she’d known about Billy Grade earlier than Michael had, and still she hadn’t told him. She knew he wasn’t working for Mosley — and how she knew, Tommy couldn’t imagine, and —

«You said,» he started, «you said Billy Grade wasn’t working for Mosley.»

She closer her eyes.

«Why did you say that?»

«No reason,» she tried. «Don’t think he did.»

«You know,» he replied.

She kept her eyes closed and her head raised, and she sobbed.

«Go back inside,» Tommy told her, «and stay.»

He did get the children at last, freeing Polly, who ran inside.

He called Lizzie — his faithful sentinel; called the girl as well. «Time to go,» he said. «Maggie’s coming with us.»

Both women seemed surprised — Maggie hid it better, though he could tell she hadn’t been expecting that. That he would not let her go back to a house where she felt comfortable and that she owned, on the other side of the city, so far away from Tommy’s reach.

Lizzie looked at him, but then she said nothing.

«Don’t you want to stay a bit longer?» she suggested. He knew she’d said it because Arthur had just arrived, and no one could control Arthur but him; and that word would come out that he’d left his brother’s body so soon, and it wasn’t good for his brand.

_(He did hold his Lizzie in one hand and his daughter in the other (Charlie was too old to accept it) — that had to be good for his brand.)_

And in the end, he thought — in the end, if anyone had a right to mourn Finn, they were Arthur and Polly and nobody else; they were, in the end, the closest thing to two parents the child had ever had.

Arthur knew it now — what Polly had known for so long — the pain of losing a child; the most unnatural feeling Tommy could imagine, and he’d only had to imagine it, when his Charlie had gone missing from his crib.

(No one would steal his Ruby. Of that, he was reasonably sure. Not the daughter of a whore, not such a strange child. But that made him even more worried, about her, than he’d ever been for Charlie, save that one occasion; a kidnapped child was a child he could understand.)

Maggie walked with them, always two steps behind.

There was a room at Arrow House, one Lizzie had started decorating early on, when Ruby had been barely a few months old. A time would come, a few years from now — a time would come when it would have been inappropriate for the siblings to share rooms.

That of course had never applied to the Shelbies, because they’d never been able to afford so many rooms — and Tommy doubted that Lizzie had had her own room, separate from her sister’s, from Jo’s.

But when in Rome, one does as the Romans do, and a child of Ruby’s wealth could not share a room with her brother, so Lizzie had decorated that room.

She’d filled it with knickknacks at first, arranged neatly on the shelves as soon as Ruby stopped chewing on them, to remind her future self of what her daughter had been like once, small things that Ruby was going to hate.

She’d bought a full size bed and matching bedsheets for it, a small dowry for such a small child, and then dolls, though Ruby didn’t show much interest in them, some of Lizzie’s favorite books.

It was closer to the master bedroom than Charlie’s room was — the room both children occupied now, which was going to become Charlie’s room soon. It was two doors down, past a closet.

Tommy knew why.

And now it was convenient, awfully convenient, for the girl, for Maggie, to sleep in.

He instructed Lizzie to lead her to Ruby’s room, as soon as they got back, and there Lizzie took her, holding a child in each hand, ready to put them to bed. He thought it was humiliating, for a twenty year old girl, to have the same bedtime as two young children. He hoped it was.

He listened to their voices, fading as they walked up the staircase, Grace’s frozen gaze fixed on them — and how much would Grace know, about Finn, about Lizzie, about Maggie and about Ruby, or even about her own child?

It was brutal to think and it was brutal to remember but Tommy figured it was true — what would Grace know, what would she think of him now, ready to bury his second brother and to take a young girl as a hostage in their house. Because the girl had sinned, and her sin had been, among other things, being born into high society, and that was a sin Grace had committed as well.

He took advantage of Lizzie’s absence to go to his study, to check the post. He’d been distracted by the birthday and quite a lot of it had piled up. Some of them birthday wishes, on the bottom — on the top, sympathies from London’s finest were starting to arrive.

Things moved fast, when someone died — funerals had to be arranged at what felt like an inhuman pace. A day was barely long enough to do a third of what Tommy wanted to do, at best — and three days were enough for a body to start to ruin.

He had a piece of paper somewhere, with the phone number of an agency, family owned: men who had been burying the dead for generations. Hard working men, Tommy liked them, Catholics just like Polly wanted.

It was there, somewhere, never too deep in a pile, always within reach — he lifted an envelope, no doubt containing reports and numbers and checklists.

And there it was, unknown, unrecognizable, but Tommy recognized it too well. Neatly handwritten address, by a hand he didn’t know, and that’s what made it stand out.

He opened it with unsteady hands, a luxury he allowed himself only when no one else was around. Inside, a single piece of paper, handwritten as well. The writing was forced, made unrecognizable on purpose.

On the paper were four words — _gypsies remember your place_.

Not a single capital and not a bit of context, either; Tommy thought it wasn’t needed.

He let Maggie play with the children that afternoon, as they waited for supper. He didn’t offer her a word — didn’t offer that to Lizzie, either, not even to Cyril when he came to his knees for scratches. He thought the dog deserved those, in the end, that he’d done nothing wrong, but still he felt like a generous king as he scratched the beast between the ears, running his hands along the wrinkles in his overabundant skin.

Charlie deemed himself too old to play, so he’d chosen a book to read, warmly encouraged by Lizzie, who was coping; Tommy knew he was coping, because of the way she was watching them, doting, even, sitting carefully on the very edge of the armchair, a picture perfect wife and mother and Tommy thought she did it to please him, in a way, entirely unaware of it or of the fact that it wasn’t what Tommy needed from her, not tonight and not ever.

Ruby was playing with the books as well, just not reading them, endlessly rearranging them into shapes, that were meant to be buildings, perhaps, but it was the same shape over and over again. Maggie was sitting by her side, helping her assemble the same block over and over again, never once suggesting changes or improvements.

She couldn’t have much experience with children, Maggie — as used as she was to being the little one. She was not the little one anymore, at almost twenty, but at the same she still felt like she was, sitting on the floor, hair down like a child, Tommy guessed she was coping.

John had been deemed old enough to die in France, at her age, but Maggie was a child, in Tommy’s eyes — could not be anything else.

Maggie had grown up dressed in silk, long hair carefully breaded and Latin classics in her hand. She would always be a child; all of them would.

«Bedtime,» Tommy announced once he felt like it, startling Lizzie, who was still perching precariously on the edge of the armchair, as if she felt like she couldn’t even occupy her entire armchair, in her own house — that made Tommy’s skin itch, with irritation and with something irrational, that resembled anger. How dare you, he wanted to ask, how dare you not be in control.

Lizzie had to take Ruby’s hand, because Tommy’s words alone were seldom enough with her. They were for Charlie, who closed his book and obediently walked to their shared room. Lizzie followed him immediately, with Ruby in her hand.

«You too,» he told the girl. Maggie was standing awkwardly in front of him. She looked like she was about to say something — then she lowered her head and she went.

«You’re planning on keeping her hostage, and then what?» Lizzie asked him as soon as she came back from the goodnights and the stories.

The anger he'd felt towards her, when she’d been sitting on the edge of the armchair, had dissolved. She was combative now, his Lizzie.

«She lied,» he said, «she didn’t honor the pact. She pays for it.»

He guessed it made sense.

«A pact she hardly wanted for herself,» Lizzie objected.

And maybe she saw herself in the girl — in spite of the fact that she and Maggie couldn’t have been born further apart. Can’t you see, he wanted to tell her, can't you see that she grew up in silk and we grew up in rags, and this somehow justifies us locking her up in Ruby’s room.

«It’s not her fault, you know,» Lizzie continued. Tommy let out a laugh; he’d never blamed Maggie for Finn’s death. Maybe he could have — could have found a way to make it work.

(To deflect the blame.)

«Do not blame her,» she warned him. It was curt and it was unkind and it was in fact a warning.

Then she stepped forward and hugged him — and it was the first tangible comfort she’d given him today.

No, not the first, he thought; she’d been the one to call the family. She’d been the one who'd called the morgue, she’d been the one who’d prepared the car and had kept the mourning family at bay.

She’d done more for him than everyone else combined, because she knew how to do it, how to lift the burden from Tommy’s back and relieve him from it, for a short while. Silent and sure and distant she’d been there, and now that they were alone, she was closing that distance and hugging him and Tommy didn’t know how to react.

(He would have liked to learn — before it would be too late.)

He hugged her back then, held her in his arms tightly, which startled her, at first, but then she was holding him tighter as well.

That night in bed they didn’t fuck — every muscle in Tommy’s body tense, ears focused on the room two doors down, the room where their hostage slept.

«Who do you think did it?» Lizzie whispered through the dark, breaking the silence he’d been studying.

Tommy could tell it had been on the tip of her tongue all day.

He thought of the note, on his desk, among his mail, he thought about the words and especially about the first one.

He’d hoped — that if he could dress, and act, just like them, and be rich and powerful enough, maybe they would forget, about who he was, about the narrowboat he’d been born on.

He could have told her it was about the business, that Finn’s car looked so much like his and maybe in the dark the killers were confused — but then again why would they expect to find a man driving away from his own house in the middle of the night, on his own car, on his own birthday?

Lizzie wasn’t stupid, and he didn’t want to offend her tonight.

But would she get it, he thought — would she really understand? Grace wouldn’t have, either, maybe even less than her. Was Lizzie fascinated, in secret, during her long days spent alone in Warwickshire, was she actually fascinated by the speeches Mosley repeated?

And had Mosley and his men discovered about the attempt, and how? Had the attempt even happened — had that evening happened, had anything, both before the night of the barley field and after?

So he said nothing, and turned on his side, damning the silence, the room two doors down and its occupant, damning the kids and the entire world; there was only Lizzie’s long back, her warm skin and her breath, and to its tune he tried falling asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are...  
> I feel like I've been writing this for literal ages! Definitely a lot less editing went into these last chapters and I feel like it shows but I need to get this thing out. Tommy and Lizzie still give me the feels...  
> Excited about finishing this one and I'm really curious about S6 and just how different it will be from the vibe I have.


	17. Pro Patria Mori

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Hell had a door and the door was a treasure chest full of guns. And you think you just found booze, or cigarettes or just scrap for Charlie’s scrapyard. But you find the guns and you think you found the Holy Graal._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has finally come to an end! And it's a long chapter this time!
> 
> The mystery is solved. Doubt they will choose this route on the show but I think it makes sense.
> 
> Enjoy and thank you so much for all the kind words!

He took her to the car first thing in the morning, after they woke up. After _she_ woke up — he’d barely even slept in the first place. But she had been sleeping through the early hours, and it had been too dark outside to awake her until now.

Let her rest, he’d thought, she deserves her rest. She’ll deserve the drive, the view; the distance, away from Birmingham, from the room two doors down, from the morgue and from Polly who was back to her realm of ghosts. So he’d decided that he was going to take her on a trip.

To the beach.

He took her hand and lead her to their car as soon as she got dressed, right there under his eyes, as casually as any other day, because she was his.

He even saved his first cigarette for later, to enjoy the view of Lizzie’s long legs bending to step into her dress, so he was smoking it now, as he drove towards London and towards the sea and away from the city, away from the world.

«Where are we going,» she tried asking, «Tommy?»

She sounded scared.

It was understandable — after the night of the barley field, so soon after Finn’s death. His brother was dead and gone and he was driving to the beach, and that was what normal people did, when their brothers died, two out of four boys left, and Ada, if it had been any other day he would have stopped at Ada’s. To let her and Lizzie take turns being in charge, to rest his eyes on one of her fancy London sofas.

They could drive away instead, Tommy thought, but where?

Towards the sea without stopping at the shore, into the horizon over the barley field in December. Together in a box of steel under the sea in the English Channel, and they would never find them there — they’d never find them again. They would never know whether they lived or they died.

A myth would arise, that of a bookkeeper turned king, Thomas Shelby, that of a whore turned queen by his side.

And as the people told their story, their bodies would rot, inside their box made of steel, underneath the sea in the English Channel. The rest of the world wouldn’t know it, but they would — it would be their bones emerging from their flesh, corroded by the sea and the elements and eaten by the fish, the box rusting away around them. They would know, what was going on with their bones.

So they might as well live, really —

The funeral was tomorrow, she reminded him as he drove through some fields. The day he’d learned of Finn’s death — which was yesterday, in retrospect, merely yesterday, and yet it felt like months ago — it had been one of those days where he would have liked to give her the wheel and rest his eyes; he’d appreciated it when Lizzie had graciously offered to organize the funeral. She hadn’t even offered, not really; she’d just sat at his desk and she’d done it, unprompted, and that was part of why Tommy loved her so much.

(He would have liked to give her the wheel, now, but she could not drive, and he had this last thing to do.)

Tommy loved her — and the funeral was tomorrow, she’d just informed him, as a matter of fact. They still had one day, one day in the limbo of grief, where his brother was dead, but he also was not.

A church service was going to be held, in Small Heath, immediate family in attendance and anyone else who wanted to be there. Lizzie had made the necessary calls and arranged the payments, sent out the calls and the telegrams and dealt with the paperwork. Among everyone he’d ever met, on the job, all the ones he’d seen die — had their families had to deal with the paperwork as well? Had they signed the cheques and chosen the coffin? And had he, Tommy — had he known it?

Or had he pretended he was not sending boys on the front lines to die?

Afterwards, instead of going to the Ritz, or to Warwickshire for a more private affair, as would have been fit for someone of Tommy’s standing — afterwards they were going to drive to the camp, where they'd gone after John's. There the Lees would be waiting for them, in their clothes, and they would arrive all dressed up in theirs, and they would burn the caravan and Finn’s remains with it and they would talk.

The Gypsies would reminisce about Finn’s childhood, maybe, the bastard they’d grown to love, even though he wasn’t the son of the woman they’d nurtured and loved and had in fact never met her. He was a puppy they’d found in the streets, Finn, a puppy their father had found in the streets and given to them before disappearing again.

(That, they all had in common, the Shelby siblings. Had he been alive — what would he have felt? Tommy didn’t know. Tommy remembered what it had felt like, when he’d almost lost his own son; maybe Arthur Sr had been the same, or maybe that was what set them apart.

 _Two sons. He’d lost two._ )

Maybe Arthur would make a speech, about Finn’s childhood, about something else. The truth was that there was not much to remember about Finn’s life, other than his childhood, because the boy had barely lived at all.

«Where are we going?» Lizzie asked him again, sounding less scared, this time, and he was back behind the wheel, driving south through the fields.

«To the beach,» he said.

She said nothing.

If it became somewhat clearer, when they passed London without stopping, or maybe when she saw the sign with the seven letters on it — Tommy couldn’t tell.

 _Margate_ , said the sign, and he wondered whether she knew, that in Margate lived a Jew whom she had met and liked, from what he could tell — that he lived in Margate in a house by the sea filled with those knickknacks old ladies love to collect.

He parked a hundred yards from the house, helped Lizzie get off the car like a gentlemen of the good old times. She looked beautiful, his Lizzie, maybe overdressed for June, all white and cream and her hair messy. He wanted Solomons to see her like this, he wanted Solomons to see that she was by his side.

«It’s the Jew, isn’t it?» she asked as soon as she was on the ground with both feet — clad in white heels, a bold choice given the terrain.

He smiled.

«Why the hurry?» Lizzie asked. «It couldn’t wait until after the funeral?»

He shook his head. It couldn’t wait — not for his brother’s funeral, not for His second coming.

«I think I have this figured out, Liz,» he told her.

«What,» she asked, «what is _this_ , Tommy?»

«Who did it,» he replied. «Who did it that night.»

She inhaled sharply, her clear eyes alert.

«The night of…?»

She didn’t go on; they both knew which night they were talking about.

«You think the Jew was _helping out_ Mosley?» she asked again, this time in disbelief, a grey cloud in her usually clear eyes. She hadn’t sounded too concerned before, not for the last stretch of the drive and not at his previous replies.

He stopped.

He’d considered it — he’d found in unlikely at first, unbelievable, given the note he’d received after Finn had been killed, given Mosley’s speeches and everything else.

He knew — everyone in this grey, cruel world knew — that there are things even a saint can forgive, if enough money’s involved; he knew that Solomons prayed, and yet he also knew what Solomons had done.

«No,» he said in the end.

He led her towards the house, which was the only building around, really — standing like a cathedral between the car and the sea, a cathedral fit for a god, one who’d come back from the dead and had done all the things one needs to do to be a proper god; that apparently included potted plants on the porch.

«He lives here?» Lizzie asked again, still in disbelief — at Solomons’s house, or with the same disbelief as earlier, he couldn’t tell.

He, too, had found it strange, at first, that someone so powerful, with so many people under his direct or indirect control, would choose to live somewhere so isolated, far away from humanity. Now it made sense, and there was nowhere else Solomons could live in his mind.

He nodded. They were at the door, so he knocked. Lizzie started shuffling her feet impatiently when he didn’t reply, but Tommy knew he needed to give him some time.

«He’s in,» he replied, based on nothing, nothing but what little he knew about the man and his own feeling — a feeling that they had come to the end of the street, to some kind of finish line in a race. The race had been slow and they’d lost, but they were at the finish line now.

And sure enough, with a turn of keys and the rattle of chains, an eye appeared through the crack, a brown eye partly covered by wild hair.

«We don’t want anything,» the man rambled. «Go preach your God somewhere else.»

«Solomons,» Tommy called out, louder than he’d spoken all morning.

The door closed again.

«We’ve traveled all morning,» Lizzie said all of a sudden. «And I better find out what this is all about.»

They could hear him sigh through the door — then another rattling of chains, another turn of a key, and the door was open.

«You brought the mistress,» he stated, then showed them the way to the living room, where he sat on his armchair, his usual armchair, and Tommy settled on the sofa.

Lizzie looked hesitant, at the lack of welcomes, at the lack of manners, as she sat by his side, but Tommy knew it was all an act. She was used to seeing strange houses and bad manners from men, his Lizzie — she also knew how to play by the rules.

«Welcome to my humble abode,» the man said, «forgive the mess. If you want tea, you better make it yourselves.»

Lizzie shook her head; Tommy’s stomach had been closed for twenty-four hours.

«I think condolences are in order,» the man started. «I am truly sorry, Tom.»

«Thank you,» he whispered; Lizzie lowered her head ever so slightly.

«My protégée called,» Solomons began, «strange to think that she used to be a child, and now she’s a widow. A captive widow.»

Tommy didn’t want to talk about her, but he knew he had to let him.

«Seems like you’ve been treating her… harshly?» he inquired. Tommy knew he knew the answer, though he didn’t know how the girl had managed to contact him. He supposed it didn’t matter.

«She’s staying at the house until this talk is over,» he replied.

Solomons was completely still, staring at Tommy and, occasionally, at Lizzie — sitting straight with her legs crossed, probably taller than both of them, silent like the Sphinx.

«She spoke?» the man asked him, and Tommy could not be surprised anymore — at the ease in his voice every time he confessed that it was him, it had in fact been him all along; that he’s watched you go crazy to find out who’d done it, while knowing it had been him, him all along.

«Thought it would take her even less. About time, wasn’t it?»

Tommy tried to look away — anywhere but the man’s face. The window, for example, he had a nice window looking out to the sea.

«Thought she’d be safe with you,» he explained, «a way to help you, if you want, just not with the Mosley thing.»

«You did it to protect her,» Lizzie interrupted him.

«You overestimate my trust in the Shelbies,» the man replied, addressing Lizzie more politely than he would have addressed Tommy, but Tommy knew she’d hit the mark, even though she didn’t know as much as he did — she didn’t know what Maggie and Solomons had in common; but she was observant, his Lizzie, she didn’t miss things.

«You made me doubt my own family,» Tommy said at last, determined not to speak about the girl even one second longer; moving his eyes back to the man in front of him, and they were heavier than lead.

«It was you,» he said, «protecting him. Mosley.»

Solomons sighed, lowered his head, then sitting straight, or as straight as his crooked back could go. He was a crooked man with a crooked face and on it a crooked grin, a crooked grin he was giving him in broad daylight, yellow teeth against the blue sea beyond the window behind him.

«Thomas,» he said, his full birth name, to make it sound formal. He was sitting with his legs crossed now, his hands joined in front of his chest, near a large coffee stain on his blouse.

He was waiting for him to acknowledge that he’d called his name, so Tommy hummed. Lizzie was a Sphinx again, still and silent, following the man’s every move.

«I know a thing or two about how to become a god,» Solomons said. He sounded the way prophets must have sounded like, thousands of years ago.

He’d told him, time and again — he’d told him everything about how he, Thomas, had turned him into a god, every detail minus a word of gratitude, but Tommy couldn’t blame him for that.

«I believe we’ve been over this,» Tommy tried. He still felt guilty about that, though going back in time he would have done it again and he knew that the other man knew that and couldn’t blame him either.

«And you know what the most important thing is?» Solomons continued, ignoring him.

He was forced to shake his head.

«Dying a spectacular death,» he said.

He uncrossed his legs, stretching his arms over his head and casting their shadows near the window, near the calm sea behind. «On a stage, as you’re making your speech. The crowd loves you, they just do. You’re saying your speech and someone shoots you right in the fucking face.»

The reminder hurt, though the man’s scar was half hidden by his spotty beard.

«Then words comes out, it was a Gypsy who shot you. And a reporter digs and he was being helped by the Jews. So you make a statue and put it in front of the altar at church. I believe you call them marters, you gentiles,» he said, his tone inquiring, because he must have seen that Tommy’s mind was elsewhere.

And besides, in front of the altar wasn’t the usual placement for a statue. Semantics, he guessed it was. Focus on the detail until the larger picture blurs, and Solomons didn’t want him to focus on the details.

«Mart… martors? Martyrs, perhaps? That you call them?»

Tommy was forced to nod. Lizzie finally moved — collapsing on herself, almost, arching her back and dropping her hands between her knees.

There was a ship at sea, far away from shore. A big, commercial ship. Carrying mechanical parts with alcohol hidden between them, Tommy thought he could tell. Maybe a chest or two full of guns. Hell had a door and the door was a treasure chest full of guns. And you think you just found booze, or cigarettes or just scrap for Charlie’s scrapyard. But you find the guns and you think you found the Holy Graal.

«I respect you, and sometimes I think we’re alike,» Solomons was saying. «And some other times, like this one, I don’t think that’s so true — but I wasn’t going to let you give another martyr to the cause,» he was explaining, sounding like a shopkeeper who’s explaining why he can’t sell you that particular item for anything less than the original price. The shipments aren’t cheap, and they only come every so often; we all must die alive.»

He moved his hair from his face, stopped to breathe — even talking seemed to be taxing for him. Tommy suddenly wondered how much he had left, and whether he’d miss him.

«It was never about you. I just couldn’t let you,» Solomons said at last.

Tommy thought he could see it now, the world behind Solomons: it was the story of a people and simultaneously that of a single Russian woman, dragged through the snow by the dogs during the pogroms — the story of a thousand mothers dragged through the dirt, all the way back to Egypt, and beyond, all the way back to Eve. All of their struggles had a concrete shape now, and it was the man’s eyes, one cloudy and white, the other dark and as sharp as ever.

It lasted a second — he looked truly sorry now, the way he’d looked when Charlie had been taken and he’d realized he’d caused it, however indirectly. Silently acknowledging a million things that were larger than them, and those were all the reasons why they couldn’t go to the pub at night and drink together like friends do, but they still wanted it.

«What do I do next?» Tommy managed to ask. He didn’t even manage to be mad.

Solomons looked pained, and Tommy realized he didn’t know the answer, and wondered what kind of god he was, if he didn’t know such answers.

«One condition,» he said instead. Instead of an answer.

Tommy accepted it. One condition for what, he would have asked, had it been anyone else; one condition, and then I get what? I get nothing, he thought, I already lost, months ago, and I have lost even more since then. Why should I give you that, he thought. Still, he grunted.

He grunted. Solomons took it as a sign to go on.

«Let her go,» he said.

Tommy thought he couldn’t believe his ears. What had she done to warrant it — what had Solomons done to deserve that, he wondered. He’d killed Tommy’s brother, in the end, he’d had Tommy’s son kidnapped, and so Tommy had shot him in the face, and so he had killed his brother, or maybe not; maybe Finn had nothing to do with that.

Maybe it wasn’t the circle of hatred that Solomons wanted — maybe that was what set them apart.

Solomons loved her, he remembered, he loved her as a daughter, and Tommy knew how that felt.

«Why should I,» he asked. «Let her go. Why should I.»

He sounded calm, but he knew he wasn’t making sense. Nothing was, nowadays.

Solomons sighed. He sighed deeply — like an old man who knows too much, and he’s grown tired of explaining, no matter what the sacred books preached.

«What else do you want, Tommy?» he asked him at last.

«Anything you wanted, you took it,» he began. «You sucked everyone you knew into your shit and when they came out, alright, _if_ they came out, you shat them right out and left them there.»

The boat was moving now, slowly, as boats do.

«What else do you want, Shelby? As if everyone you’ve already taken wasn’t enough.»

The silence between his words was broken only by Lizzie’s breath — and that sealed it, for Tommy, that sealed the man’s words. Lizzie’s chest expanding and receding with every new wave of air, her chest filled with years and years, more than a decade weighing on her lungs. And she was thin and frail, and Tommy wondered, how can you take it. How can I?

It was John and it was Epsom, it was Angel, it was every time he’d been tempted, even long into their marriage — tempted to take out his wallet and pay her, not because he believed he had to, but because he’d wanted to hurt her, to hurt her for real; because she might have been collateral damage at first, but there was nothing collateral about his Lizzie now.

And Tommy, he had become so good at hurting her.

«Let her go,» Solomons said in the end, his voice softer — no longer the voice of a god but the voice of a father; and Tommy thought the dam had broken. Which reminded Tommy where his loyalties lay, which reminded Tommy that Solomons, too, had a heart.

Which wasn’t like a god, because they are supposed to love everyone equally, and care for everyone equally; but Solomons cared for the girl, who was the closest thing to a daughter that God had allowed him to have.

«She’ll go far away. My people will help her,» he said. That much, Tommy knew.

So he nodded.

Afterwards they left quickly.

It hadn’t taken long. All this way, Tommy thought, so many hours behind the wheel, for this — and it was worth those hours, and many more. They were still walking near the premises, on the strip of land between the street and the beach. The day before his brother’s funeral wasn’t the time for a walk on the beach, but the sea was there, the weather warm and midday close.

«It’s true,» was the first thing Lizzie said.

«What,» Tommy said.

«What he said.»

About martyrdom, and about pain — and about the sinkhole Tommy had become; she didn’t specify and he knew she meant all of that.

«Having second thoughts?» Tommy asked. Which was a question he’d already asked, he knew, before, and it felt familiar on his tongue, reminded him of a Christmas not even six months ago.

Maybe that was the deal — that they had always framed these conversations as final, definitive, and yet they never were. Maybe it was a process, maybe the work was not done and it would never be done completely, not until their last breath.

They were all the things he’d never had enough time to think about with Grace — she’d been gone before they’d even been an issue; that was why it was her golden hair he saw, golden glimpses just behind the corners.

He wanted Lizzie’s to turn grey.

«Stop asking,» she replied.

«What?»

«I already said it. No. No second doubts.»

He nodded. They were on the beach now — they’d silently agreed it wasn’t the day for a romantic walk on the beach; but a few minutes, they could afford those.

«I love you,» Lizzie was saying. «Don’t care if you don’t. I just ask to be treated nicely. Or at least that you try.»

She was scolding him — referring to what the Jew had said; about Tommy being a sinkhole, absorbing everyone around him and turning them into nothing.

That was the difference between the two of them — that Lizzie was talking about it now, while Tommy, if left on his own devices, would have wrapped the man’s words in thick paper, buried them among the scrap in Charlie’s scrapyard, to never see them again.

She was walking ahead, closer to the water, maybe thinking about her youth, the days she’d spent on the beach with her mother and their vain hope that the salt would cure her sister Jo. She knew loss, Lizzie, she knew a thing or two about that. Hid it well, but she did; no matter how hard she hid it, she had been a child, a bright one, he was sure; and now she had hopes and dreams, his Lizzie, hidden somewhere inside herself, and he’d ignored that, when it had served him well.

She was walking slowly, avoiding the upcoming waves at the very last second, Russian roulette with the water and one of her finest shoes.

«I love you,» he said at last, trying to fake some amount of naiveté, like he hadn’t even noticed that it was the first time he’d ever said it, at least to her.

«It’s hard,» he added later, as an afterthought, as it that explained.

«That, it is,» she replied, laughed.

«I want to do this with you,» he said. «But it’s not what you signed up for.»

«It’s exactly what I signed up for,» she said, turning back to face him, then crouching down to remove her high heeled shoes, to dip her bare feet into the water. «I knew it. All along. What I was getting into. I was fine with it, mostly,» she said.

He thought she couldn’t know that — that no one would ever know that, unless they’d taken a trip inside his head.

«I want to do this with you, too. It’s all I ever asked for,» she concluded.

«I’m afraid,» he said, lighting a cigarette; and God knew he had all the reasons. He tried to say it matter of factly, as if it didn’t even concern him; the way one would say, “the car’s ready”, thinking that maybe that was the secret, the key to everything he had inside and couldn’t quite turn into words, most days.

«I am, too,» she replied. He knew she had to be — if not for the drugs and the guns and the ploys, however little she actually knew about those, then she was afraid for Ruby, for the world and its more evident threats.

«Let me in,» she said; he’d always assumed it was impossible, and he knew that she knew that; just like he’d never fully be inside her, he’d never feel the pain he’d caused her.

«I don’t want another night like that,» she said.

He nodded.

«It might not be what you wanted, but it’s what you have,» she reminded him, and he remembered — that Grace was dead, and John, and now Finn, and everyone else.

But, he thought, and maybe it was the sea, or the sun, or his fortieth birthday that had just passed — he thought he wouldn’t have exchanged that for Lizzie.

He wished he knew how to convey that to her.

That he’d grown to accept, somehow — that Grace wasn’t going to be back tomorrow, or ever; and that was quite alright, as much as it could ever be alright. That the scientist might, even though that was unlikely — they might still find a way to bring her back; that he _had_ found a way to bring her back, to find her golden hair inside the booze, inside the morphine.

But this — waiting for the next scientific discovery, or the umpteenth ploy from his very real enemies, waiting for someone to tell him that they’d been keeping his Grace hostage all along — waiting for the golden speck of hair to appear at dusk, for her voice to start talking to him, looking for her blonde strands on the bottom of the glass —

That it wasn’t a life to be lived, that it was barely a life at all, and that it wasn’t fair to the life beside him, alive and burning and warm like her skin at night.

Maybe he’d known, for some time, that he loved her, but he’d been afraid of the ghost’s reaction, or maybe just of himself. And yet it became more and more apparent every day — that there were only two choices, in the end, and they were a barley field and a bed, and in the bed was Lizzie, and she was warm and he’d carved his spot into her side.

He hadn’t expected actually wanting to live; he’d surprised himself too when he’d chosen to propose to her. Angry at Polly’s reaction, at her approval, because she thought he was doing the right thing; wishing he knew the words to tell her that it was not that.

«It’s all I ever wanted, maybe,» he said. He removed his shoes too, walked forward until he was side by side with her.

She was looking at him now, puzzled. The wind was making her hair fly around her head and he thought she looked young. They were young again, he thought, they had always been, just like they’d always been the age they were now, every time they’d been together.

Lizzie had been there to stay.

«It’s not a compromise, this,» he said, patting his arm, then hers, after a few moments of hesitation, as if he didn’t know whether he was actually allowed to touch her, as if they hadn’t already made love countless times.

«This is nice,» he tried again. He could have been talking about their marriage, about the sea, about the wind or the wet sand beneath their feet. But he knew she’d understand — just like she always had.

«Yes,» she said, still laughing, «it is.»

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s done!
> 
> This 70+k words character study (because that’s essentially what it is) has finally come to an end. It is officially the longest thing I’ve ever written and I am feeling things right now.  
> The Solomons scene is actually one of the very first things I wrote — there was no Lizzie in it at first, I added her later because... it felt right? They are partners in crime and I love that.
> 
> This is my take on S6 — it probably won’t be anything like this, also because I don’t think this story would work as a tv series with all the introspection and it would be boring as hell lol.


End file.
